Oaks talks about bad things coming during Provo temple dedication

[Scott Lloyd]

1 hour ago, HappyJackWagon said:

Is it unusual that Elder Oaks did the dedication? Aren't dedications usually presided over by a member of the First Presidency? Especially a temple like this...in Provo...seems like the First Presidency would have been involved. Does anyone know about this specifically or even more generally about the dedications done by apostles who are not in the 1st Pres.?

It's unusual but not unprecedented.

As ksfisher pointed out, President Packer presided at the dedication of the Brigham City Utah Temple. It was scarcely surprising that he be chosen for this, because Brigham City is so deeply ingrained in his personal, professional and ecclesiastical background.

Similarly, Elder Oaks has roots that run deep in Provo and the surrounding Utah County, both boyhood and professional, as he served as BYU president.

[busybee]

5 minutes ago, VideoGameJunkie said:

Do you feel the same way with people just calling Joseph Smith and Brigham Young by their names without adding prophet Smith? He actually preferred being called Brother Joseph not President Smith. I played sports so it's common of me to call people by just their last name.

I don't have a problem when people use the full names of church leaders. My father preferred to be called Bro Harry rather than President. But using the person's surname without  their title or first names is disrespectful. They are not your pals on a sports team or someone you're trash talking on an opposing team. They are prophets and apostles of God and deserve respect.

I gather from previous conversations that you are of the younger generation. No offence, but respect for elders or leaders seems to be diminishing among younger generations. I am 52 years old and will still not call my 86 year old VT companion just by her first name without prefixing it with Sister. 

It's just common courtesy and good manners to address those who lead us with respect.

[bluebell]

Just now, busybee said:

I don't have a problem when people use the full names of church leaders. My father preferred to be called Bro Harry rather than President. But using the person's surname without  their title or first names is disrespectful. They are not your pals on a sports team or someone you're trash talking on an opposing team. They are prophets and apostles of God and deserve respect.

I gather from previous conversations that you are of the younger generation. No offence, but respect for elders or leaders seems to be diminishing among younger generations. I am 52 years old and will still not call my 86 year old VT companion just by her first name without prefixing it with Sister. 

It's just common courtesy and good manners to address those who lead us with respect.

I think the idea of only using the last name as being disrespectful is probably an issue of the generation that we are raised or the field we are used to working in. I know that when i was doing a lot of historical research and had to provide citations for things, only using someone's last name (once every knew who was being referred to) was the norm.  It had nothing whatsoever to do with the level of respect being shown.

[halconero]

Maybe this is just me being a stick in the mud, but there is power in titles and the use thereof (whether derived from God, or simply the social power we give them). I'm in and Elders Quorum presidency right now, and in a casual setting I'll refer to my friend (the president) as Steven, but when on assignment or in a formal meeting where we need direction under his keys I call him President W-----. It brings a sense of formality and officialdom to whatever we're doing at the moment. Sam takes it in stride, and it's a pretty good way of signalling (either to him or to those I'm assigned to visit or communicate with) that we're dealing with Elders Quorum business at the moment.

[VideoGameJunkie]

People my age say just Monson and Hinckley and McConkie instead of saying President or Elder first all the time. Blame the generation I guess where we refer to our Presidents of the United States by last names only. You hear people say Bush and Clinton and Obama and just that.

[halconero]

7 minutes ago, VideoGameJunkie said:

People my age say just Monson and Hinckley and McConkie instead of saying President or Elder first all the time. Blame the generation I guess where we refer to our Presidents of the United States by last names only. You hear people say Bush and Clinton and Obama and just that.

I hear a mix. You get some who refer to them solely by their last name, some who refer to them by title + last name, and some who say the full name every time (ex: Dieter F. Uchtdorf, Russel M. Nelson, etc). I would say from personal experience that each gets used with the same frequency. I prefer the title + last name reference, but would be quite content if we started using brother + first name again. It's just something which strikes me as both intimating familiarity while maintaining the sacred nature of our membership in the Church.

[Gray]

On my mission it was pretty common for missionaries to refer to GAs by last name only

[ERayR]

21 hours ago, cinepro said:

"LDS Apostle Prophesies Trump win in November"

I can't see that it makes much difference who is elected.  It is the goodness or lack thereof of the inhabitants that matters.  Elected officials are but a reflection of the people that elect them.

[bluebell]

1 hour ago, halconero said:

Maybe this is just me being a stick in the mud, but there is power in titles and the use thereof (whether derived from God, or simply the social power we give them). I'm in and Elders Quorum presidency right now, and in a casual setting I'll refer to my friend (the president) as Steven, but when on assignment or in a formal meeting where we need direction under his keys I call him President W-----. It brings a sense of formality and officialdom to whatever we're doing at the moment. Sam takes it in stride, and it's a pretty good way of signalling (either to him or to those I'm assigned to visit or communicate with) that we're dealing with Elders Quorum business at the moment.

I don't have a problem with that and it makes sense.  Though when i have served in presidencies myself no one ever called the YW's or RS president 'President So and So'.  It was always just 'sister'.

I think the issue might be trying to hold other people to our own personal standards of etiquette .  

[VideoGameJunkie]

The only title I still use is for the Bishop. Even when a Bishop is released, I still refer to them as Bishop. So I refer to several men close to me as Bishop.

[halconero]

1 hour ago, bluebell said:

I don't have a problem with that and it makes sense.  Though when i have served in presidencies myself no one ever called the YW's or RS president 'President So and So'.  It was always just 'sister'.

I think the issue might be trying to hold other people to our own personal standards of etiquette .  

I've actually seen the latter on the rise. All of my YSA Bishops thusfar have been very particular about referring to the RS President as 'President So and So," I like it. It puts them on equal footing with the EQ president.

I agree with your other statement. Many routinely refer to President Obama or Prime Minister Trudeau as just 'Obama' or 'Trudeau' w/o any intent of disrespect.

[halconero]

Getting back to the topic at hand, I'm not in a position of any particularly great authority, but I have been sensing of late a particular urgency especially associated with the temple and the work associated with it. Not in the usual manner either, but more specifically a push that the blessings associated with it will be of particular importance and need in the coming years.

I won't share specifics, but I will say that yesterday I had a particularly interesting experience where the entire ward council spontaneously had the same impression while scattered throughout the building in various Sunday School classes. We all came together at the end of the day in front of the Bishop's office and rapidly realized we were there for the same reason. And yes, it was related to an admonition of a type similar to Elder Oaks'.

[Scott Lloyd]

2 hours ago, Gray said:

On my mission it was pretty common for missionaries to refer to GAs by last name only

While I agree that setting and sphere can make a difference (the Joseph Smith Papers volumes, for example, routinely refer to the early Church leaders on second reference by surname only), missionaries doing this with Church leaders, past or present, strikes me as improper, and I would expect such missionaries to be stringently corrected. Moreover, I would think it appropriate for rank-and-file Church members to do such correcting where the mission president or other leaders in the mission haven't gotten around to it. I would do so myself should the occasion ever arise.

 

Edited March 21, 2016 by Scott Lloyd

[Scott Lloyd]

2 hours ago, bluebell said:

I don't have a problem with that and it makes sense.  Though when i have served in presidencies myself no one ever called the YW's or RS president 'President So and So'.  It was always just 'sister'.

I think the issue might be trying to hold other people to our own personal standards of etiquette .  

The Church's convention is to refer to them as "Sister," not "President."

(I present this as merely a matter of information, so don't anyone try to pick a fight with me over it.)

[Ahab]

On 3/20/2016 at 2:34 PM, cinepro said:

"LDS Apostle Prophesies Trump win in November"

Like it wouldn't be just as bad if not worse if Hilary won?

Bad things are coming either way. 

[Ahab]

2 hours ago, ERayR said:

I can't see that it makes much difference who is elected.  It is the goodness or lack thereof of the inhabitants that matters.  Elected officials are but a reflection of the people that elect them.

Is there supposed to be a ray of sunshine in your statement? 

The point is that things are getting and going to continue to get worse, not better. 

At least not until this world passes away. 

[consiglieri]

59 minutes ago, Scott Lloyd said:

While I agree that setting and sphere can make a difference (the Joseph Smith Papers volumes, for example, routinely refer to the early Church leaders on second reference by surname only), missionaries doing this with Church leaders, past or present, strikes me as improper, and I would expect such missionaries to be stringently corrected. Moreover, I would think it appropriate for rank-and-file Church members to do such correcting where the mission president or other leaders in the mission haven't gotten around to it. I would do so myself should the occasion ever arise.

 

Some earn respect by what they do, and do not require titles be used or even last names.

Jesus comes to mind as an example.

Brother Joseph, too, for that matter.

[bluebell]

1 minute ago, consiglieri said:

Some earn respect by what they do, and do not require titles be used or even last names.

Jesus comes to mind as an example.

Brother Joseph, too, for that matter.

Jesus actually goes by quite a few titles when it's necessary. 

But I don't believe that any of the men in question would require someone to refer to them with a specific title. Do you believe they would?

[juliann]

Has a hundred years gone by where there hasn't been some great calamity fall upon the earth?

[Ahab]

8 minutes ago, juliann said:

Has a hundred years gone by where there hasn't been some great calamity fall upon the earth?

No.

And if your point is that it doesn't take a prophet of God to know that bad things are coming... that people are generally becoming more and more corrupt and wicked in these latter days regardless of technological advances... that just about everyone agrees on that point, then I do not agree with you.

 

[ERayR]

1 hour ago, Ahab said:

Is there supposed to be a ray of sunshine in your statement? 

The point is that things are getting and going to continue to get worse, not better. 

At least not until this world passes away. 

My people watching experiences do not reveal a whole lot of sunshine.  I imagine it is much like General Mormon in BoM end times.

[juliann]

32 minutes ago, Ahab said:

No.

And if your point is that it doesn't take a prophet of God to know that bad things are coming... that people are generally becoming more and more corrupt and wicked in these latter days regardless of technological advances... that just about everyone agrees on that point, then I do not agree with you.

 

I merely asked a question. You seem a tad irritated.

I don't think people are becoming more corrupt and wicked. And until you are willing to be a Jew under Hitler, you don't either.  Unless you have a different and measurable basis, stats tell a different story. I think someone already mentioned that. At the very least, you are going to have to use a lot more nuance to be convincing. It all depends on how much you benefit from the status quo as to how bad you judge changes to be. 

[sunstoned]

12 hours ago, carbon dioxide said:

Wickedness is not based on being healthy, better educated, or more liberty.  Plus our society is not more healthy.  We are overweight and very unhealthy.  I would even debate more educated.  For many younger people today, their education is not stored in their brain but their smart phone. 

We live longer, much longer, than any other time in history.  We are on a whole more healthy.  We are much more educated than anytime in history.  Those are facts.What you have stated is opinion.  If we are worse off today, then that means there was some point in time that we as a human race were better off.  Please point this out for me.  Point out a time in the history of humanity which was the high point that we seem to be devolving from.  Please note that I said history, not mythology. My CFR still stands.

[sunstoned]

19 hours ago, Robert F. Smith said:

Actually it is the sober assessment of science that the current dangers are far more likely to end life on planet Earth.  The available technology makes that more possible than ever, and we have already seen industrial genocide on an unprecedented scale -- in my lifetime.  Perhaps you think Nazism to have been a religion, and perhaps you think that Chairman Mao and Joe Stalin to have been motivated by religion to kill more people than at any time in history.  They believed that religion is the opiate of the people and made it punishable by death to have faith in anything other than scientific Marxism, while good old Adolf tried to get rid of the Chosen People in his famed "Final Solution."  Those who cannot learn from the past are doomed to repeat it.

See Jonathan Schell, The Fate of the Earth (Knopf, 1982).

Bulletin of the Atomic Scientists, Jan 19, 2015, online at http://thebulletin.org/ .

I will give you the fact that the possibility of nuclear war is something that has been with us for the past 60 years.  However, this is offset by scientific advances in medicine and technologies that allow us to live safer and fuller lives today.  We are much better off than any other time is history.  If you disagree, then please point out that time in history life on a whole was better.  

[Robert F. Smith]

4 minutes ago, sunstoned said:

I will give you the fact that the possibility of nuclear war is something that has been with us for the past 60 years.  However, this is offset by scientific advances in medicine and technologies that allow us to live safer and fuller lives today.  We are much better off than any other time is history.  If you disagree, then please point out that time in history life on a whole was better.  

Those of us privileged few who happen to live in the West or in advanced industrial nations do have many advantages, such as those you mention.  However, I am not sure that those advantages make our lives fuller than in some other age or place.  Especially if anomie and the reification of man continue to relentlessly advance in such societies.  In the United States, for example, we have more people living alone than at any time in history. We do have so many choices available, yet many people find their lives meaningless, empty, and insipid.  Instead of satisfaction, we have "civilization and its discontents."  We have high technology and the existential dilemma . . .