10 Things That Amaze And Impress Me

[Kevin Christensen]

10 Things (of Many) that Amaze and Impress Me
 
1. D&C 3.
Think about it from the perspective of Joseph Smith in July 1828 when at this point he has nothing going for him but failure, poverty, ignorance, and fresh tragic loss, and consider everything that has happened since July 1828. Where could this revelation have come from at that point and how could it possibily have been fullfilled in the way it has?
 
2. http://en.fairmormon.org/Biblical_Keys_for_Discerning_True_and_False_Prophets
 
While on my mission I started wondering why was it that things that seemed so obvious to me seemed unbelievable to so many others. (Position 2 Perry Scheme). So I started collecting Biblical tests for true and false prophets. That only made things more obvious to me without answering the other question. So I started collecting Biblical statements on finding truth and being blinded to truth. That helped but I still had not answered the other question. Then I started collected arguments by Biblical peoples given to justify their rejection of Biblical prophets. As I pondered that list of 70 or so arguments, things came together for me. I saw an organic relationship between the tests for prophets, the requirements for seeing truth, and the arguments put forward to justify rejecting prophets. The relationship has ties to the notions of the sacrifice of a broken heart and a contrite spirit, which correspond to the Buddha's temptation by Maya via fear and desire, which represent the illusion of the world. In order to get to a greater knowledge of truth, a person must be willing to risk what they think and what they want. At the points where a person says, "that can't be right" or "that isn't what I want" they refuse to offer a contrite spirit and bow to fear, or refuse to offer a broken heart and cling to their desires.
 
3. Nibley's discussion of Blass on the rules for detecting forgeries.
 
http://publications.maxwellinstitute.byu.edu/fullscreen/?pub=935&index=1
 
As he discusses the basic principles and reasons for testing documents by tentatively accepting them as true and reading them in context, and the inevitable consequences that follow from failing to do so (that is, assuming the Book of Mormon is 19th century fiction and reading in that context), Nibley sets out patterns and pitfalls that illuminate everything that has happened in Book of Mormon debates ever since. Much has happened to advance the details and range of the discussions, but the principles, pitfalls, and patterns remain clear.
 
4. Barker's Temple Theology and the Book of Mormon.
 
Here, for instance. http://publications.maxwellinstitute.byu.edu/fullscreen/?pub=1081&index=15
 
5. Modern NDE accounts and the Book of Mormon
 
Here, for instance. http://publications.maxwellinstitute.byu.edu/fullscreen/?pub=1382&index=2
 
6. Welch on the Sermon on the Mount and the Temple. A blinding meme that too often operates in LDS discussions has been that there is nothing about the Temple in the Book of Mormon and that Joseph Smith based everything on Masonry. For me, reading Welch's initial one-page FARMS note changed everything. In consequence, I made comparisons between 3 Nephi and Eliade's Cosmos and History. Here is Welch.
 
http://publications.maxwellinstitute.byu.edu/book/the-sermon-at-the-temple-and-the-sermon-on-the-mount/
 
7. Benjamin's discourse. While I was in England, I had an investigator reject the Book of Mormon based on his view of the implausiblity of the mass conversion in Benjamin's speech. I've since seen others explain it in terms of a revival sermon. To me, the consequences to perception and understanding are exactly what Blass' principles predict. And thanks to Mark Wright I've even seen Mesoamerican connections.
 
http://ldsmag.com/ldsmag/bookofmormon/080519king.html
 
8. John Clark's Presentation on trends in Book of Mormon archeology. I saw him present at the Joseph Smith Conference in Washington DC in 2005. The key charts are here.
 
http://en.fairmormon.org/Book_of_Mormon/Anachronisms
 
9. Kolob. A few years back I did a PowerPoint presentation for the Pittsburgh Single Adults. I can't put it all here, but the way that ties together archeoastronomy, Abraham, and Facsimile 2 continues to amaze me. Nibley had pointed out the crucial clues in Hamlet's Mill back in a 1980 paper on The Three Facsimiles from the Book of Abraham.
 
"...the determinative sign for 'heart' often figures as the plumb line coming from a well-known astronomical surveying device. the merkhet [Lit. the "informer,"] that which causes to know!. Evidently 'heart' is same thing very specific, as it were the 'center of gravity.' And this may lead in quite another direction. The Arabs preserved a name far Canopus--besides calling the star Kalb at-teiman ('heart of the south'):
Suhail el wetn, 'Canopus Ponderosus, the heavy-weighting Canopus," i.e., "Canopus was the weight at the end of the plumb-line...(p. 73) by means of which this depth [of the universe] was measured." (p.271)
Of all the stars it alone was taken for static, exempted from the Precession" (p. 269, N. 16).
Hence it is "the primordial star. 'presented under the form of an Egg that contained all the things that were to be born...caIled 'l'etoile immobile'. It is near the Great Cloud which marks the South Pole of the ecliptic, and is NOT to be sought in the North." (p.269).
 
There are all sorts of connections to facsimile 2, including associations between Hathor and the plumb line, the canopic figures and the four quarters of the earth which represented the solistices and equinoxes in an astronomical "flat earth" through which the planets move, and the transition between the astronomical Bull and Ram that takes places in the days of Abraham. Nibley's One Eternal Round even points at the circle of life (yes, think Lion King as well as hypocephalus) represented by the leaf, lion and cow next to the four canopic figures in the bottom half of the hypocephalus.
 
10. The 12 Steps of Recovery and the Book of Mormon. The new science of addiction uses the disease model. (See the DVD Pleasure Unwoven). That is Organ + Damage = Symptoms. Repair the Damage and the Symptoms go away. Merely attack the symptoms (say, pelting undesireable behavior with shaming and disapproving language, or perhaps excommunicating or locking up the perps), and nothing much changes. In all addictions, whether drug addictions, behavioral addictions such as to gambling, sex (really to lust pointed whereever), perfectionism, or codependence, the damage is to the brain. Specifically, the dopamine receptors in the mid brain enlarge, and the parts of the cortex that should be weighing risks and benefits shrink. The consequent behavior is a symptom, not the actual disease. The damage, the disease, is a combination of craving and impaired judgement. It turns out that 12 step recovery can actually reverse the damage, physically healing the brain, reducing the craving and restoring judgement. The 12 Steps came from Bill W. and Dr. Bob and Alcoholics Anonymous, but the principles work on all addictions because all addictions use the same neural pathways. Colleen Harrison wrote the first LDS 12 Step Book based on the Book of Mormon, He Did Deliver Me From Bondage. The Book of Mormon scriptures that point out the 12 steps are actually clearer and better than the ones the A.A. architects pulled from the Bible.
 
1. We admitted that we were powerless over our addiction, that our lives had become unmanageable.

• Even so, I would that ye should remember, and always retain in remembrance…your own nothingness…and humble yourselves in the depths of humility. (Mosiah 4:11)

2. Came to Believe that a power greater than ourselves could restore us to sanity.

• And this is the means by which salvation cometh. And there is none other salvation save this… Believe in God; believe that he is, and that he created all things…believe that he has all wisdom and all power…believe that man doth not comprehend all the things the Lord can comprehend. (Mosiah 4:8-9)

3. Made a decision to turn our will and our lives over to the care of God as we understood him.

• But if ye will turn to the Lord with full purpose of heart, and put your trust in him,… he will, according to his own will and pleasure, deliver you out of bondage. (Mos. 7:33)

4.  Made a searching and fearless moral inventory of ourselves.

• Yeah, and I did remember all my sins and iniquities…yeah, I saw that I had rebelled against my God (Alma 36:13)
• I am encompassed about because the of the temptations and sins which do easily beset me. And when I desire to rejoice, my heart groaneth because of my sins. (2 Nephi 4:18-19)

5. Admitted to God, to ourselves, and to another human being, the exact nature of our wrongs.

• And whosoever transgresseth against me, him shall ye judge according to the sins which he hath committed; and if he confess his sins before thee and me, and repenteth in the sincerity of his heart, him he shall forgive, and I will forgive him also. (Mosiah 26:29)

6. Were entirely ready to have God remove all these defects of character.

• “Oh God, Aaron hath told me that there is a God;…wilt thou make thyself known unto me, and I will give away all my sins to know thee…” (Alma 22:18)

7. Humbly asked God to remove our shortcomings.

• Oh Lord wilt thou redeem my soul?... Wilt thou make me that I shake at the appearance of sin? (2 Nephi 4:31)
• I give unto men weakness that they may humble; and my grace is sufficient for all men that humble themselves before me; for if they humble themselves… and have faith in me…I will make weak things become strong unto them. (Ether 12:27)

8. Made a list of all the persons we had harmed, and became willing to make amends to them all.

• “And they traveled throughout all the land of Zarahemla… zealously striving to repair all the injury they had done to the church, confessing all their sins…” (Mosiah 27:35)

9. Made direct amends to such people whenever possible, except when to do so would injure them or others.

• “return unto them and acknowledge your faults and the wrong which ye have done.” (Alma 39:13)

10. Continued to take personal inventory, and when we were wrong, promptly admitted it.

• And now, my beloved brethren, seeing that our merciful God has given us so great knowledge concerning these things, let us remember him, and lay aside our sins, and not hang down our heads, for we are not cast off. (2 Nephi 10:20)

11. Sought through prayer and meditation to improve our conscious contact with God as we understood

• But this was not all; they had given themselves to much prayer, and fasting; therefore they had the spirit of prophecy, and the spirit of revelation and when they taught, they taught with power and authority of God. (Alma 17:3)

12. Having had a spiritual awakening because of these Steps, we tried to carry this message to addicts, and to practice these principles in all our affairs.

• And we have suffered all manner of afflictions, and all this, that perhaps we might be the means of saving some soul, and we supposed that our joy would be full if perhaps we could be the means of saving some. (Alma 26:30)

FWIW
 
Kevin Christensen
Bethel Park, PA

Edited November 24, 2013 by Kevin Christensen

[Tiki]

Very nice!

I always considered the key to discerning a false prophet from a true prophet is:

Jacob 7:11

that none of the (true) prophets have written, nor prophesied, save they have spoken concerning this Christ.

[Robert F. Smith]

..................................................................  

9. Kolob. A few years back I did a PowerPoint presentation for the Pittsburgh Single Adults. I can't put it all here, but the way that ties together archeoastronomy, Abraham, and Facsimile 2 continues to amaze me. Nibley had pointed out the crucial clues in Hamlet's Mill back in a 1980 paper on The Three Facsimiles from the Book of Abraham.

 

"...the determinative sign for 'heart' often figures as the plumb line coming from a well-known astronomical surveying device. the merkhet [Lit. the "informer,"] that which causes to know!. Evidently 'heart' is same thing very specific, as it were the 'center of gravity.' And this may lead in quite another direction. The Arabs preserved a name far Canopus--besides calling the star Kalb at-teiman ('heart of the south'):

Suhail el wetn, 'Canopus Ponderosus, the heavy-weighting Canopus," i.e., "Canopus was the weight at the end of the plumb-line...(p. 73) by means of which this depth [of the universe] was measured." (p.271)

Of all the stars it alone was taken for static, exempted from the Precession" (p. 269, N. 16).

Hence it is "the primordial star. 'presented under the form of an Egg that contained all the things that were to be born...caIled 'l'etoile immobile'. It is near the Great Cloud which marks the South Pole of the ecliptic, and is NOT to be sought in the North." (p.269).

 

There are all sorts of connections to facsimile 2, including associations between Hathor and the plumb line, the canopic figures and the four quarters of the earth which represented the solistices and equinoxes in an astronomical "flat earth" through which the planets move, and the transition between the astronomical Bull and Ram that takes places in the days of Abraham. Nibley's One Eternal Round even points at the circle of life (yes, think Lion King as well as hypocephalus) represented by the leaf, lion and cow next to the four canopic figures in the bottom half of the hypocephalus.

 

.....................................................................   

Kevin Christensen

Bethel Park, PA

 

I have liked your comparison of Qalb at-Taiman "Heart of the South" ever since I read it in your “New Wine and New Bottles: Scriptural Scholarship as Sacrament,” Dialogue, 24/3 (Fall 1991), 124, citing G. de Santillana & H. von Dechend, Hamlet’s Mill, 73-74.  The plural is Qulub.  However, please don't spell it Kalb, which means "dog" in Arabic.

 

At the same time, since it is mentioned in Abraham 3:13, I like to compare Kokob "Star" with ancient Kochab (β-Ursae Minoris), which was the virtual polaris during the Old Kingdom in Egypt.  Indeed, the merkhet you speak of was combined with a b3y (n imy wnwt “palm-rib of the observer of hours”), which could be sighted in on Mizar (ζ-Ursae Majoris) in the Big Dipper’s handle, and on Kochab in the bowl of the Little Dipper, in order to survey. 

[DBMormon]

Thanks Kevin

[jwhitlock]

Especially liked your article on NDEs, Kevin. Very thought provoking.

[Kevin Christensen]

Thanks all.  I've been out doing leaves all day, and just noticed that the number of the 12 steps under my number 10 got mangled during cut and paste.  I've adjusted that.

 

Several years after writing the NDE paper, I heard Howard Storm speak at at the 1999 Salt Lake City IANDS conference.  His NDE is akin to Alma's  (negative and postive aspects) and what is most intriguing to me is how much they talk alike apart from the details of the actual experience.  I also think it interesting that Brigham Young's comments on the after life go so far beyond what any scriptural account has, and yet fit so well with modern reports.  When Jedidiah Grant reported his experience to Heber C. Kimball he said, "Why it was just as Brigham has told us many times." I'm pretty sure it all come from Brigham's Winter Quarter's vision. 

 

And all day while picking up and bagging leaves, I've been thinking of other LDS things that amaze and impress me.

 

Best,

 

Kevin Christensen

Bethel Park, PA

[mfbukowski]

One more thing that continually amazes me: Kevin Christensen's writings.

[Calm]

Amen to that one.  It astonishes me that he doesn't have more points...like at least 10 for every post he makes practically.  The only thing that can explain it to me is that from what I've seen less people are giving points now, probably due to reading the board on tech that doesn't allow it...like a phone?  I don't because it is too annoying to respond and if I read, I have to be able to respond, lol.

[urroner]

I click on the links Kevin provided and they all bring me back to this page.  Has Kevin once again resorted to circular argument to convince us he is right?

 

All the links point to this: \www.mormondialogue.org/topic/62256-10-things-that-amaze-and-impress-me/null

 

This is in both Firefox and IE.

[Kevin Christensen]

I click on the links Kevin provided and they all bring me back to this page.  Has Kevin once again resorted to circular argument to convince us he is right?

 

All the links point to this: \www.mormondialogue.org/topic/62256-10-things-that-amaze-and-impress-me/null

 

This is in both Firefox and IE.

The links are all correct in when I look through the editor.  But they do not point correctly once I save.  It's not a problem I've ever had before

 

Kevin Christensen

Bethel Park, PA

[Calm]

If one "quotes" Kevin's post, one can copy the entire link for oneself and then paste it into another tab, it works that way.

 

Very strange glitch.

 

Let me see if quoting it corrects it.

Edited November 25, 2013 by calmoriah

[Calm]

 

 

Am having to go relink at the actual page so see below post for fresh and working links.  If this doesn't work, you will have to just copy the link and work with that.

 

 

It works!  At least for me.

Edited November 25, 2013 by calmoriah

[Calm]

http://en.fairmormon.org/Biblical_Keys_for_Discerning_True_and_False_Prophets

 

http://publications.maxwellinstitute.byu.edu/fullscreen/?pub=935&index=1

 

http://publications.maxwellinstitute.byu.edu/fullscreen/?pub=1081&index=15

 

http://publications.maxwellinstitute.byu.edu/fullscreen/?pub=1382&index=2

 

http://publications.maxwellinstitute.byu.edu/book/the-sermon-at-the-temple-and-the-sermon-on-the-mount/

 

http://ldsmag.com/ldsmag/bookofmormon/080519king.html

 

http://en.fairmormon.org/Book_of_Mormon/Anachronisms

Edited November 25, 2013 by calmoriah

[urroner]

http://en.fairmormon.org/Biblical_Keys_for_Discerning_True_and_False_Prophets

 

http://publications.maxwellinstitute.byu.edu/fullscreen/?pub=935&index=1

 

http://publications.maxwellinstitute.byu.edu/fullscreen/?pub=1081&index=15

 

http://publications.maxwellinstitute.byu.edu/fullscreen/?pub=1382&index=2

 

http://publications.maxwellinstitute.byu.edu/book/the-sermon-at-the-temple-and-the-sermon-on-the-mount/

 

http://ldsmag.com/ldsmag/bookofmormon/080519king.html

 

http://en.fairmormon.org/Book_of_Mormon/Anachronisms

Thanks.

[J Green]

Thanks for this, Kevin. You inspire me with almost every post. Your thoughts are always constructive, insightful, and thoughtful.

[Kevin Christensen]

Thanks for the comments and for the link solution.

Best,

Kevin Christensen

Pittsburgh, PA