Stargazer

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Placeholder for popping the topic above the spam

FWIW, here's a video about this put out by Benjamin Park, who seems to be the current president of the Mormon History Association.

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I'm wondering if this isn't mere spam, but an actual attack on the board, for being LDS-oriented? No evidence of this, however, so it's just my wild speculation.

Lori Daybell found guilty of conspiracy to commit first degree murder.

I deleted that post shortly after posting it. Felt I was wasting my time. And I was. You get the last word

Oh nevermind.

Yes, but suffering for one's own sins must be done in both body and spirit, so that suffering for them will occur after they are resurrected. Only an immortal body can withstand that degree of suffering -- D&C 19:17,18 -> "But if they would not repent they must suffer even as I; Which suffering caused myself, even God, the greatest of all, to tremble because of pain, and to bleed at every pore, and to suffer both body and spirit—and would that I might not drink the bitter cup, and shrink" - emphasis added

Before my wife died, she and I together organized her funeral, considered speakers, hymns, and so on. Because most of our children are estranged from the Church, and since they would be there, she wanted the plan of salvation laid out for their benefit. She asked her best friend, Cora, to give the concluding talk, and they closeted together to consult on all that she wanted said. She may have been giving vegetarians as steak, so to speak, but she was very concerned that her children hear about what she felt needed to be heard. This was her last chance to bear testimony to them, although Cora didn't say it in a way that it was discernably being directed at them. I didn't hear any negative feedback about this, later on. I think they expected to hear about the gospel. I don't think it moved them in any significant way.

If you think that's a straw man, try to run a business in New York City. The place is famous for city agencies with regulations that contradict other city agencies' regulations, and the only way to survive is to figure out which ones you have to bribe to get them to look the other way. Most of my working life I worked for one level of the government or the other. I am well aware that corruption in the government is not just a platitude, but a way of life. Anytime money is at issue, unscrupulous people find ways to profit. And the more money is involved, the stronger the temptation. And with government, billions of dollars/pounds/euros are at stake.

Nice, I guess. I have to confess to being a fuddy-duddy. I am old enough to remember the last hymnbook change, and that was very annoying. It's promising to be just as annoying this time as well, especially with some of the brand-new hymns that I find rather unsatisfying. But I'm glad "Come Thou Fount of Every Blessing" is back.

Concerning "Basing tax exemptions on whether a group proselytizes or serves only co-religionists privileges religions that do those things and disadvantages those that don’t" brings to mind the Druze religion. Not only do they not proselytize, you can't even join them if you want to. They don't let anyone in, whatsoever. You have to be born into it.

Yes, but it ultimately wasn't us that originated the idea of calling it a prison, it was Paul: 1 Peter 3:19 -> By which also he went and preached unto the spirits in prison; This was referring to the disobedient -- which seems to contradict D&C 138, except that Paul was writing a letter, not a doctrinal dissertation. So one might assume a lesser degree of precision in terminology. And then we have the idea from D&C 1:38 -> "whether by mine own voice or by the voice of my servants, it is the same."

MVP? Sorry, the only thing this brings to mind is "Most Valuable Player," but that seems irrelevant, so I'm not sure what you mean. Well, that's a security feature. As I mentioned, anyone who knows your church account userid and password could show up at the temple, show the QR code displayed on the phone screen, and without the photo they couldn't be sure the recommend was yours.

It's available on YouTube on the FAIR channel. When I first heard the talk, that particular story stood out to me. When I wanted to listen to it again I went searching and I had a difficult time trying to re-find it. Dr. Petersen's talks are long, so it took me some time before I finally located it again. He tells the story in two parts in his talk, the two parts being separated by a long interval, and the relevant parts of the story only lasts about two or three minutes. This was a talk given at the FAIR Conference back in 2008. I'm going to give links to the two relevant parts below, but the entire talk is worthy of listening to. Here's the link to the entire talk: Humble Apologetics. The video is just over an hour long. Here are links to the precise points in the talk to which I was referring: First - 9:35 to 11:55 - https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=aKY-ndlPI3M&t=582s Second - 47:17 to 48:54 - https://youtu.be/aKY-ndlPI3M?si=no8ohC5KW9x4WYFl&t=2836 I have a strong interest in what Dr. Petersen says and writes, so I gathered many of his FAIR talks into a playlist. It's a public playlist, so if you want to see it, here's the link: https://www.youtube.com/playlist?list=PLJiNesxstia4GUr928wPEtoUSUw2U3-mJ EDITED TO ADD: I had made a transcription of the story from the video, and just for grins here it is:

Elder Boyd K. Packer spoke upon the topic of the redemption of the dead in the October 1975 General Conference, and while he doesn't directly address the topic of this thread, I felt I should mention that talk here. And rather than try to summarize it, you can view/listen/read it in its entirety here. "The Redemption of the Dead" By Elder Boyd K. Packer Of the Council of the Twelve

You're correct, of course. So much of how we perceive the universe is bound up with our brain chemistry! If chemistry is the answer, which it may not be. Two people experiencing the exact same thing at the same time can come away with entirely different feelings about the thing. I lost my mother to cancer at age 7, but this never caused me to doubt God's love for me. However, similar things have happened to others and they held a grudge against God! That's a worldly event of great emotional impact, but even strong spiritual experiences received by two different people sometimes have disparate outcomes. What is "enough" is so very personal. I've had a lot of "strong" spiritual experiences, and they have taught me that God really does care about me, and that I can trust him. My wife told me once that her late husband had exactly one spiritual experience early on in his conversion, no others that he had ever spoken of, and as she said, "It was enough for him." How many does one need? God knows, but I don't. In one of those FAIR conferences Daniel Peterson once told about a pair of missionaries who each received the same dream about a particular address in a particular place that they needed to go visit, that the person living there was waiting for the gospel. They went to that place, and the person living there was ready to hear and joined the church. After their missions, years later, one of the two former missionaries apostatized and when his dream and its result was mentioned to him, he responded "It means nothing." So, yes, what is enough?

There is actually a small cost to making the system able to discern whether those who signed off on the recommend originally are still in the offices they were in at the time the recommend was issued. So it saves time and money to not implement this feature in software. But as a programmer, I can tell you that the work required for this is trivial. In fact, I could write the SQL query for determining if the conditions are met for re-issuing the recommend in the mobile format in the next 20 minutes or less, if I had the database details on hand, which I don't. That's assuming they are using a relational database management system, anyway. They better be, actually! I've been trying to come up with a plausible scenario for the current policy, but all I'm coming up with are relatively implausible ones.

There's bound to be a rational reason for it, but I sure don't know it. What I like about the mobile recommend is that it depends on an app that you can't lose. Say you head for the temple, but managed to forget your phone. If you're with someone else, borrow their phone, sign them out of Tools, sign yourself in, and bingo, there you are!

I remember a photograph of an apparent font that some LDS member took in a Mesoamerican ruin. He claimed it was a baptismal font. I agree. I kind of disagree on that. The Gospel is the answer/solution to the Fall. Without the Fall, the Gospel is unnecessary. The Gospel is the Good News. The News being that Christ's sacrifice saves you from your sins. My take is that the reason for the world's existence is to see what we will all do when out of Father's sight, and, knowing that we will sin, a Savior is provided to save us from those sins, if we will strive to repent and obey. From that viewpoint, we don't need to hear about and choose the Gospel in this life. If we don't we will have the opportunity later, while we are still within the veil of forgetfulness. The important question is, what will we do when we have complete freedom to make choices. That actually sounds very plausible! And the most plausible one I've seen. And whether or not you're very educated, you're not alone. I've found that idea mentioned in at least one place on the web. Might It be that you've not experienced enough interaction? I don't claim to understand everything, but my experiences with him tend to lead me towards complete trust. I'm intrigued as to your dark potential interpretation, actually. But this is probably not the thread for it. We are the last dispensation, so we get the whole package, including information about the other dispensations. That's my take on it, anyway. Dispensationalism isn't only taught in our church. One of my sons joined an offshoot of an offshoot of the Adventist movement, and his new wife's father was a pastor of it in Victoria, BC. We visited them at one point, and attended his church (on a Saturday, naturally). Their church service was long and except for the dad's short sermon (which was actually quite interesting), it was as boring as all get out. The most important part of it (to them) was a sermon originating in North Carolina being broadcast over the internet. This was by their chief pastor, and man, he was on and on interminably, like about an hour. I tried to follow what he was on about, but it was difficult. One of the points he tried to make was the many dispensations of God's word. I lost count as to how many of them there were. Almost as if every new Old Testament prophet started a new dispensation. You're welcome!