General Conference Commemorating First Vision Bicentennial

[Navidad]

18 hours ago, Scott Lloyd said:

So general conference will convene in a few weeks, and I’m looking forward to what will transpire in commemoration of the First Vision to the Prophet Joseph Smith. 
 

My wife said she heard one of the BYU Education Week speakers — I think it was one of the Twelve — say that there will be a live remote of President Russell M. Nelson speaking to the conference from the Sacred Grove. This, of course, would be reminiscent of what happened in April 1980, when we observed the sesquicentennial of the Church and President Spencer W. Kimball spoke to the conference in a live remote from the Peter Whitmer farmhouse in Fayette, New York. That is still fresh in my mind, though it occurred 40 years ago now. 

Has anyone here heard of anything else that will be happening at this conference?

I hope and expect that two of my very favorite hymns will be sung or performed: “Oh How Lovely Was the Morning” and, of course, “Praise to the Man.”

It is interesting you mention "Praise to the Man." I remember my uncomfortable reaction the first time I heard it sung in an LDS worship service. It was the first time (that I remember) ever singing a praise hymn in a church worship service to a man instead of to a member of the Godhead. Isn't that kind of hagiography of a human being what helps leads some non-LDS Christians to think that members of the LDS church "worship" Joseph Smith? Isn't that in the case of Hymn 27 in a worship hymnal in a worship service in a worship building kind of getting close to validating their claim? I must admit I am still shaking a bit from one of yesterday's two sacrament talks in our ward. The entire talk was about Joseph Smith. In my thinking, it walked a very fine line as appropriate in a worship service. Praising a man from a chapel podium during a worship hour just did not seem appropriate. Perhaps I would understand it better if I was a Catholic talking about Saint somebody. It almost sounded that way to me . . . she was extolling the saintliness of Joseph Smith. Do members of the church all agree on how Joseph Smith is to be beatified, especially in a formal worship service? I could certainly understand extolling the virtues of the founder of a faith in a Friday night fireside, but a Sunday morning formal Sacrament service?  Please, I am simply sharing my reaction to yesterday and to singing a praise hymn to a man in church - very much outside my comfort zone. I acknowledge that. 

[2BizE]

I’ve received personal revelation that Pres. Nelson will declare at the end of conference “Let’s go to Disney World”.  I’ve already arranged hotel and tickets in Orlando as I try to always be prepared.

[Scott Lloyd]

2 hours ago, Navidad said:

It is interesting you mention "Praise to the Man." I remember my uncomfortable reaction the first time I heard it sung in an LDS worship service. It was the first time (that I remember) ever singing a praise hymn in a church worship service to a man instead of to a member of the Godhead. Isn't that kind of hagiography of a human being what helps leads some non-LDS Christians to think that members of the LDS church "worship" Joseph Smith? Isn't that in the case of Hymn 27 in a worship hymnal in a worship service in a worship building kind of getting close to validating their claim? I must admit I am still shaking a bit from one of yesterday's two sacrament talks in our ward. The entire talk was about Joseph Smith. In my thinking, it walked a very fine line as appropriate in a worship service. Praising a man from a chapel podium during a worship hour just did not seem appropriate. Perhaps I would understand it better if I was a Catholic talking about Saint somebody. It almost sounded that way to me . . . she was extolling the saintliness of Joseph Smith. Do members of the church all agree on how Joseph Smith is to be beatified, especially in a formal worship service? I could certainly understand extolling the virtues of the founder of a faith in a Friday night fireside, but a Sunday morning formal Sacrament service?  Please, I am simply sharing my reaction to yesterday and to singing a praise hymn to a man in church - very much outside my comfort zone. I acknowledge that. 

I’ve been confronted by similar complaints to this a number of times. In short I could not disagree with you more earnestly. I could pontificate about the richness of the English language and how words have different shades of meaning according to context (have you ever praised a child for doing well in school?). 
 

I think in this instance I’ll just paste in an eloquent address given a number of years ago by President Gordon B. Hinckley, prior to his becoming the 15th president of the Church of Jesus Christ. President Hinckley and I share a love and admiration for Joseph Smith, an instrument in the hands of Jesus Christ in the restoration of the gospel in this final dispensation:

“Praise to the Man”

By President Gordon B. Hinckley

Second Counselor in the First Presidency

Many years ago when at the age of twelve I was ordained a deacon, my father, who was president of our stake, took me to my first stake priesthood meeting. In those days these meetings were held on a week night. I recall that we went to the Tenth Ward building in Salt Lake City, Utah. He walked up to the stand, and I sat on the back row, feeling a little alone and uncomfortable in that hall filled with strong men who had been ordained to the priesthood of God. The meeting was called to order, the opening song was announced, and—as was then the custom—we all stood to sing. There were perhaps as many as four hundred there. Together these men lifted their strong voices, some with the accents of the European lands from which they had come as converts, all singing these words with a great spirit of conviction and testimony:

Praise to the man who communed with Jehovah!

Jesus anointed that Prophet and Seer.

Blessed to open the last dispensation,

Kings shall extol him, and nations revere.

(Hymns, No. 147.)

They were singing of the Prophet Joseph Smith, and as they did so there came into my heart a great surge of love for and belief in the mighty Prophet of this dispensation. In my childhood I had been taught much of him in meetings and classes in our ward as well as in our home; but my experience in that stake priesthood meeting was different. I knew then, by the power of the Holy Ghost, that Joseph Smith was indeed a prophet of God.

It is true that during the years which followed there were times when that testimony wavered somewhat, particularly in the seasons of my undergraduate university work. However, that conviction never left me entirely; and it has grown stronger through the years, partly because of the challenges of those days which compelled me to read and study and make certain for myself. I think that many of you have gone through similar experiences. President Harold B. Lee once said that our testimonies need renewing every day. In harmony with that principle, I would desire to strengthen our testimonies of the great work that the God of heaven has permitted to transpire in these last days.

A few years ago, I received a letter written by an evangelist who with diatribe lashed out against the Prophet Joseph Smith, calling him a wicked imposter, a fraud, a fake, and a deceiver, and declaring that he was undertaking a campaign to spread his views. Whatever became of his work, I do not know. It will not have been significant. That kind of work may topple a few of the weak, but it only strengthens the strong. And long after that man and others of his kind have gone down to silence, the name of Joseph Smith will continue to ring with honor and love in the hearts of an ever-growing band of Latter-day Saints in an ever-increasing number of nations.

I remember being in Nauvoo, the City of Joseph, with two brethren of the First Quorum of the Seventy and twelve mission presidents and their wives for a mission presidents’ seminar. The touch of autumn was on the land—the leaves golden, a little haze in the air, the nights cool, the days warm. The tourist season was over, and the city was quiet and beautiful. We held our first meeting in the restored Seventies Hall, where in the 1840s men prepared themselves, through study and through teaching one another the doctrine of the kingdom, to go out to declare the message of the gospel to the world. The work that went on there was a forerunner of the Missionary Training Centers of the Church. As we met in that and other homes and halls in Nauvoo, in our minds and hearts it was as if the figures of the past were with us—Joseph and Hyrum, Brigham Young, Heber C. Kimball, John Taylor, Wilford Woodruff, the brothers Pratt—Orson and Parley—and a host of others.

This was indeed Joseph’s city. He was the prophet who planned it, and his followers had built it. It became the largest and the most impressive in the state of Illinois. With sturdy brick homes; with halls for worship, instruction, and entertainment; and with the magnificent temple standing on the crest of the slope up from the river, this community on the Mississippi was put together as if its builders were to be there for a century or more.

There, before that tragic day at Carthage, the Prophet was at the zenith of his mortal career. As I stood where he once stood and gazed on the city, I thought of the events that had brought him there, reviewing in my mind his inheritance. I thought of his forebears who generations before had left the British Isles and come to Boston; of their lives in the New World, through five generations on his father’s side and four on his mother’s; of their labors in clearing the lands of Massachusetts, New Hampshire, and Vermont to build farms and homes; of their distinguished service in the War for Independence; of the adversities and the failures they experienced in trying to wrest a living from the granite hills among which they lived. I thought of the little boy, born in Sharon in December of 1805, given his father’s name. I reflected on that terrifying period of sickness when typhus fever struck the family, and osteomyelitis, with great pain and debilitating infection, settled in Joseph’s leg. That was while the family lived in Lebanon, New Hampshire; and how remarkable it was that only a few miles away, at the academy in Hanover, was Dr. Nathan Smith, who had developed a procedure by which that infected leg might be saved.

But the cure was not to be accomplished without terrible suffering. In fact, today it is difficult to conceive how the little boy stood it as his father held him in his arms and his mother walked and prayed among the trees of the farm to escape his screams while the surgeon made the long incision and with forceps broke off the portions of infected bone without benefit of anesthesia of any kind. Perhaps remembrance of that intense suffering helped prepare Joseph Smith for the later tarring and feathering at Kirtland, the foul jail at Liberty, and the shots of the mob at Carthage.

As I contemplated Joseph Smith’s life, I thought of the forces that moved the Smith family from generations of life in New England to western New York, where they had to come if the foreordained purposes of God were to be accomplished. I thought of the loss of the family farm, of poor crops in that thin soil, of the great freeze of 1816 when a killing frost in July forced upon them the decision to look elsewhere; then of the move to Palmyra, of the purchase of a farm in Manchester, and of the revivalist preachers who stirred the people and so confused a boy that he determined to ask God for wisdom.

That was the real beginning of it all, that spring day in the year 1820 when he knelt among the trees, opened his mouth in prayer, and beheld a glorious vision in which he spoke with God the Eternal Father and his Son, the risen Lord Jesus Christ. Then followed the years of instruction, the instructor an angel of God who on a dozen and more occasions taught, rebuked, warned, and comforted the boy as he grew into a young man.

And so, while in Nauvoo the other day I reflected on the preparation for prophethood; I reflected on this amazing Joseph Smith. I cannot expect his detractors to know of his prophetic calling by the power of the Holy Ghost, but I can raise some questions for them to deal with before they can dismiss Joseph Smith. I raise only three of many that might be asked: First, what do you do with the Book of Mormon? Second, how do you explain his power to influence strong men to follow him, even unto death? And third, how do you rationalize the fulfillment of his prophecies?

I take in my hand the Book of Mormon. I read its words. I have read Joseph Smith’s explanation of how it came to be. To the unbelieving it is a story difficult to accept, and critics for generations have worn out their lives writing books intended to refute that story and to offer other explanations than the one given by Joseph the Prophet. But to the open-minded, this critical writing has only stimulated them to dig deeper; and the more deeply they dig, the greater the accumulation of evidence for the validity of Joseph Smith’s story. Still, as has been demonstrated for a hundred and fifty years, the truth of the Book of Mormon will not be determined by literary analysis or by scientific research, although these continue to be reassuring. The truth about the origins of the Book of Mormon will be determined today and tomorrow, as it has been throughout the yesterdays, by reading the book in a spirit of reverence and respect and prayer.

Some time ago, I received a letter from a father who said that, in response to a challenge I once offered at general conference that we read the Book of Mormon, he and his family were going to read the first edition, which touched so deeply so many strong and able men who read it when it first came from the press. I commended him but hastened to add that no one need look for a first edition to get the spirit of this remarkable volume. Every one of the more than a million copies that will be printed this year carries that same spirit, includes that same marvelous promise, and will yield the same result in testimony concerning the truth of the book.

The Book of Mormon is here to be handled and to be read with prayer and earnest inquiry. All the work of its critics throughout the hundred and fifty three years of the book’s presence has lacked credibility and has been without effect on those who have prayerfully read the book and received by the power of the Holy Ghost a witness of its truth. If there were no other evidence for the divine mission of Joseph Smith, the Book of Mormon would stand as an irrefutable witness of that fact. To think that anyone less than one inspired could bring forth a volume which should have so profound an effect for good upon so many others is to imagine that which simply cannot be. The evidence for the truth of the Book of Mormon is found in the lives of the millions, living and gone, who have read it, prayed about it, and received a witness of its truth.

My second question, how do you explain Joseph Smith’s power to influence strong men and women to follow him, even unto death, is similarly difficult to dismiss. Anyone who has any doubt about Joseph Smith’s powers of leadership need only look at the men who were attracted to him. They did not come for wealth. They did not come for political power. They were not drawn by dreams of military conquest. His offering to them was none of these; rather, it concerned only salvation through faith in the Lord Jesus Christ. It involved persecution with its pain and losses, long and lonely missions, separation from family and friends, and in many cases death itself.

Take for instance, Orson Hyde. Brother Hyde was a clerk in the village of Kirtland when he met Joseph Smith, the youthful prophet. It was to this unknown, unpromising young seller of buttons and thread and calico that Joseph, speaking in the name of the Lord, would say that he, Orson Hyde, was ordained “to proclaim the everlasting gospel, by the Spirit of the living God, from people to people, and from land to land, in the congregations of the wicked, in their synagogues, reasoning with and expounding all scriptures unto them.” (D&C 68:1.)

This young man, this clerk in a village store, under the inspiration of that prophetic call, walked two thousand miles on foot through Rhode Island, Massachusetts, Maine, and New York, “reasoning with and expounding all scriptures unto” all he met.

I recall being at the scene of Orson Hyde’s home in Nauvoo, the comfortable home he left to travel to England and Germany and to visit Constantinople, Cairo, and Alexandria en route to Jerusalem where on 24 October 1841, he stood on the Mount of Olives and dedicated by the authority of the holy priesthood the land of Palestine for the return of the Jews. That was a quarter of a century before Herzl undertook the work of gathering the Jews to their homeland.

For another example, take Willard Richards—an educated man who, when Joseph and Hyrum Smith surrendered themselves to the governor of Illinois and were placed in Carthage Jail, was among a handful of men who went with them. By the afternoon of 27 June 1844, most had been sent to take care of certain matters of business, leaving only John Taylor and Willard Richards with the Prophet and his brother Hyrum. That afternoon following dinner, the jailer, knowing of the mob outside, suggested that they would be safer in the cell of the jail. Turning to Willard Richards, Joseph asked, “If we go into the cell will you go with us?” To this Elder Richards responded:

“Brother Joseph, you did not ask me to cross the river with you … you did not ask me to come to Carthage … you did not ask me to come to jail with you—and do you think I would forsake you now? But I will tell you what I will do; if you are condemned to be hung for ‘treason,’ I will be hung in your stead, and you shall go free.” (B. H. Roberts, A Comprehensive History of the Church, 2:283.)

Strong and intelligent men do not demonstrate that kind of love for a charlatan or a fraud. That kind of love comes of God and the recognition of integrity in men. It is an expression of the spirit and reflects the example of the Savior, who gave his life for all men and who declared, “Greater love hath no man than this, that a man lay down his life for his friends.” (John 15:13.)

There were so many others—the Youngs, the Kimballs, the Taylors, the Snows, the Pratts, and more upon more—who when they first met Joseph Smith seemed ordinary and unpromising, but who under the power of the truths and priesthood that Joseph Smith restored became giants in achievement through their service to others.

Finally, what of Joseph Smith’s prophecies? There were more than a few, and they were fulfilled. Among the most notable was the revelation on the Civil War. You are familiar with it; it was spoken on Christmas Day, 1832. There were many high-minded men and women who deplored the institution of slavery then common in the South, and there was much talk of abolition. But who but a prophet of God would have dared to say, thirty-nine years before it was to happen, that “war [would] be poured out upon all nations,” beginning “at the rebellion of South Carolina,” and that “the Southern States [would] be divided against the Northern States”? (D&C 87:1–3.) This remarkable prediction saw its fulfillment with the firing on Fort Sumter in Charleston Harbor in 1861. How could Joseph Smith have possibly foreseen with such accuracy the event that was to come thirty-nine years after he spoke of it? Only by the spirit of prophecy which was in him.

Or again, consider the equally remarkable prophecy concerning the movement of the Saints to these mountain valleys. The Saints were then living in Nauvoo and its sister community across the Mississippi and were enjoying a prosperity they had not previously known. They were building a temple and other substantial structures. Their new homes were of brick, constructed to endure. And yet one day in August of 1842, while visiting in Montrose, Joseph prophesied “that the Saints would continue to suffer much affliction and would be driven to the Rocky Mountains, many would apostatize, others would be put to death by our persecutors or lose their lives in consequence of exposure or disease, and [speaking to those who were present] some of you will live to go and assist in making settlements and build cities and see the Saints become a mighty people in the midst of the Rocky Mountains.” (History of the Church, 5:85.)

Viewed in the context of the time and circumstances, this statement is nothing less than remarkable. Only a man speaking with a knowledge beyond his own could have uttered words which would be so literally fulfilled.

And what of this prophecy, which so magnificently foresaw the joyous destiny of this church?

“Our missionaries are going forth to different nations … the Standard of Truth has been erected; no unhallowed hand can stop the work from progressing; persecutions may rage, mobs may combine, armies may assemble, calumny may defame, but the truth of God will go forth boldly, nobly, and independent, till it has penetrated every continent, visited every clime, swept every country, and sounded in every ear, till the purposes of God shall be accomplished, and the Great Jehovah shall say the work is done.” (History of the Church, 4:540.)

Great was the Prophet Joseph Smith’s vision. It encompassed all the peoples of mankind, wherever they live, and all generations who have walked the earth and passed on. How can anyone, past or present, speak against him except out of ignorance? They have not tasted of his words, they have not pondered about him, nor prayed about him. As one who has done these things, I add my own words of testimony that he was and is a prophet of God, raised up as an instrument in the hands of the Almighty to usher in a new and final gospel dispensation. Of the Prophet Joseph Smith, we could say:

“When a man gives his life for the cause he has advocated, he meets the highest test of his honesty and sincerity that his own or any future generation can in fairness ask. When he dies for the testimony he has borne, all malicious tongues should ever after be silent, and all voices hushed in reverence before a sacrifice so complete.” (Ezra Dalby, Ms, Dec. 12, 1926.)

It is most fitting that today we sing in tribute to Joseph Smith, the great latter-day servant of our Lord and Master Jesus Christ:

Great is his glory and endless his priesthood,

Ever and ever the keys he will hold.

Faithful and true, he will enter his kingdom,

Crowned in the midst of the prophets of old.

(Hymns, No. 147.)

Edited March 10, 2020 by Scott Lloyd

[Navidad]

1 hour ago, Scott Lloyd said:

I’ve been confronted by similar complaints to this a number of times. In short I could not disagree with you more earnestly. I could pontificate about the richness of the English language and how words have different shades of meaning according to context (have you ever praised a child for doing well in school?). 
 

I think in this instance I’ll just paste in an eloquent address given a number of years ago by President Gordon B. Hinckley, prior to his becoming the 15th president of the Church of Jesus Christ. President Hinckley and I share a love and admiration for Joseph Smith, an instrument in the hands of Jesus Christ in the restoration of the gospel in this final dispensation:

“Praise to the Man”

By President Gordon B. Hinckley

Second Counselor in the First Presidency

Many years ago when at the age of twelve I was ordained a deacon, my father, who was president of our stake, took me to my first stake priesthood meeting. In those days these meetings were held on a week night. I recall that we went to the Tenth Ward building in Salt Lake City, Utah. He walked up to the stand, and I sat on the back row, feeling a little alone and uncomfortable in that hall filled with strong men who had been ordained to the priesthood of God. The meeting was called to order, the opening song was announced, and—as was then the custom—we all stood to sing. There were perhaps as many as four hundred there. Together these men lifted their strong voices, some with the accents of the European lands from which they had come as converts, all singing these words with a great spirit of conviction and testimony:

Praise to the man who communed with Jehovah!

Jesus anointed that Prophet and Seer.

Blessed to open the last dispensation,

Kings shall extol him, and nations revere.

(Hymns, No. 147.)

They were singing of the Prophet Joseph Smith, and as they did so there came into my heart a great surge of love for and belief in the mighty Prophet of this dispensation. In my childhood I had been taught much of him in meetings and classes in our ward as well as in our home; but my experience in that stake priesthood meeting was different. I knew then, by the power of the Holy Ghost, that Joseph Smith was indeed a prophet of God.

It is true that during the years which followed there were times when that testimony wavered somewhat, particularly in the seasons of my undergraduate university work. However, that conviction never left me entirely; and it has grown stronger through the years, partly because of the challenges of those days which compelled me to read and study and make certain for myself. I think that many of you have gone through similar experiences. President Harold B. Lee once said that our testimonies need renewing every day. In harmony with that principle, I would desire to strengthen our testimonies of the great work that the God of heaven has permitted to transpire in these last days.

A few years ago, I received a letter written by an evangelist who with diatribe lashed out against the Prophet Joseph Smith, calling him a wicked imposter, a fraud, a fake, and a deceiver, and declaring that he was undertaking a campaign to spread his views. Whatever became of his work, I do not know. It will not have been significant. That kind of work may topple a few of the weak, but it only strengthens the strong. And long after that man and others of his kind have gone down to silence, the name of Joseph Smith will continue to ring with honor and love in the hearts of an ever-growing band of Latter-day Saints in an ever-increasing number of nations.

I remember being in Nauvoo, the City of Joseph, with two brethren of the First Quorum of the Seventy and twelve mission presidents and their wives for a mission presidents’ seminar. The touch of autumn was on the land—the leaves golden, a little haze in the air, the nights cool, the days warm. The tourist season was over, and the city was quiet and beautiful. We held our first meeting in the restored Seventies Hall, where in the 1840s men prepared themselves, through study and through teaching one another the doctrine of the kingdom, to go out to declare the message of the gospel to the world. The work that went on there was a forerunner of the Missionary Training Centers of the Church. As we met in that and other homes and halls in Nauvoo, in our minds and hearts it was as if the figures of the past were with us—Joseph and Hyrum, Brigham Young, Heber C. Kimball, John Taylor, Wilford Woodruff, the brothers Pratt—Orson and Parley—and a host of others.

This was indeed Joseph’s city. He was the prophet who planned it, and his followers had built it. It became the largest and the most impressive in the state of Illinois. With sturdy brick homes; with halls for worship, instruction, and entertainment; and with the magnificent temple standing on the crest of the slope up from the river, this community on the Mississippi was put together as if its builders were to be there for a century or more.

There, before that tragic day at Carthage, the Prophet was at the zenith of his mortal career. As I stood where he once stood and gazed on the city, I thought of the events that had brought him there, reviewing in my mind his inheritance. I thought of his forebears who generations before had left the British Isles and come to Boston; of their lives in the New World, through five generations on his father’s side and four on his mother’s; of their labors in clearing the lands of Massachusetts, New Hampshire, and Vermont to build farms and homes; of their distinguished service in the War for Independence; of the adversities and the failures they experienced in trying to wrest a living from the granite hills among which they lived. I thought of the little boy, born in Sharon in December of 1805, given his father’s name. I reflected on that terrifying period of sickness when typhus fever struck the family, and osteomyelitis, with great pain and debilitating infection, settled in Joseph’s leg. That was while the family lived in Lebanon, New Hampshire; and how remarkable it was that only a few miles away, at the academy in Hanover, was Dr. Nathan Smith, who had developed a procedure by which that infected leg might be saved.

But the cure was not to be accomplished without terrible suffering. In fact, today it is difficult to conceive how the little boy stood it as his father held him in his arms and his mother walked and prayed among the trees of the farm to escape his screams while the surgeon made the long incision and with forceps broke off the portions of infected bone without benefit of anesthesia of any kind. Perhaps remembrance of that intense suffering helped prepare Joseph Smith for the later tarring and feathering at Kirtland, the foul jail at Liberty, and the shots of the mob at Carthage.

As I contemplated Joseph Smith’s life, I thought of the forces that moved the Smith family from generations of life in New England to western New York, where they had to come if the foreordained purposes of God were to be accomplished. I thought of the loss of the family farm, of poor crops in that thin soil, of the great freeze of 1816 when a killing frost in July forced upon them the decision to look elsewhere; then of the move to Palmyra, of the purchase of a farm in Manchester, and of the revivalist preachers who stirred the people and so confused a boy that he determined to ask God for wisdom.

That was the real beginning of it all, that spring day in the year 1820 when he knelt among the trees, opened his mouth in prayer, and beheld a glorious vision in which he spoke with God the Eternal Father and his Son, the risen Lord Jesus Christ. Then followed the years of instruction, the instructor an angel of God who on a dozen and more occasions taught, rebuked, warned, and comforted the boy as he grew into a young man.

And so, while in Nauvoo the other day I reflected on the preparation for prophethood; I reflected on this amazing Joseph Smith. I cannot expect his detractors to know of his prophetic calling by the power of the Holy Ghost, but I can raise some questions for them to deal with before they can dismiss Joseph Smith. I raise only three of many that might be asked: First, what do you do with the Book of Mormon? Second, how do you explain his power to influence strong men to follow him, even unto death? And third, how do you rationalize the fulfillment of his prophecies?

I take in my hand the Book of Mormon. I read its words. I have read Joseph Smith’s explanation of how it came to be. To the unbelieving it is a story difficult to accept, and critics for generations have worn out their lives writing books intended to refute that story and to offer other explanations than the one given by Joseph the Prophet. But to the open-minded, this critical writing has only stimulated them to dig deeper; and the more deeply they dig, the greater the accumulation of evidence for the validity of Joseph Smith’s story. Still, as has been demonstrated for a hundred and fifty years, the truth of the Book of Mormon will not be determined by literary analysis or by scientific research, although these continue to be reassuring. The truth about the origins of the Book of Mormon will be determined today and tomorrow, as it has been throughout the yesterdays, by reading the book in a spirit of reverence and respect and prayer.

Some time ago, I received a letter from a father who said that, in response to a challenge I once offered at general conference that we read the Book of Mormon, he and his family were going to read the first edition, which touched so deeply so many strong and able men who read it when it first came from the press. I commended him but hastened to add that no one need look for a first edition to get the spirit of this remarkable volume. Every one of the more than a million copies that will be printed this year carries that same spirit, includes that same marvelous promise, and will yield the same result in testimony concerning the truth of the book.

The Book of Mormon is here to be handled and to be read with prayer and earnest inquiry. All the work of its critics throughout the hundred and fifty three years of the book’s presence has lacked credibility and has been without effect on those who have prayerfully read the book and received by the power of the Holy Ghost a witness of its truth. If there were no other evidence for the divine mission of Joseph Smith, the Book of Mormon would stand as an irrefutable witness of that fact. To think that anyone less than one inspired could bring forth a volume which should have so profound an effect for good upon so many others is to imagine that which simply cannot be. The evidence for the truth of the Book of Mormon is found in the lives of the millions, living and gone, who have read it, prayed about it, and received a witness of its truth.

My second question, how do you explain Joseph Smith’s power to influence strong men and women to follow him, even unto death, is similarly difficult to dismiss. Anyone who has any doubt about Joseph Smith’s powers of leadership need only look at the men who were attracted to him. They did not come for wealth. They did not come for political power. They were not drawn by dreams of military conquest. His offering to them was none of these; rather, it concerned only salvation through faith in the Lord Jesus Christ. It involved persecution with its pain and losses, long and lonely missions, separation from family and friends, and in many cases death itself.

Take for instance, Orson Hyde. Brother Hyde was a clerk in the village of Kirtland when he met Joseph Smith, the youthful prophet. It was to this unknown, unpromising young seller of buttons and thread and calico that Joseph, speaking in the name of the Lord, would say that he, Orson Hyde, was ordained “to proclaim the everlasting gospel, by the Spirit of the living God, from people to people, and from land to land, in the congregations of the wicked, in their synagogues, reasoning with and expounding all scriptures unto them.” (D&C 68:1.)

This young man, this clerk in a village store, under the inspiration of that prophetic call, walked two thousand miles on foot through Rhode Island, Massachusetts, Maine, and New York, “reasoning with and expounding all scriptures unto” all he met.

I recall being at the scene of Orson Hyde’s home in Nauvoo, the comfortable home he left to travel to England and Germany and to visit Constantinople, Cairo, and Alexandria en route to Jerusalem where on 24 October 1841, he stood on the Mount of Olives and dedicated by the authority of the holy priesthood the land of Palestine for the return of the Jews. That was a quarter of a century before Herzl undertook the work of gathering the Jews to their homeland.

For another example, take Willard Richards—an educated man who, when Joseph and Hyrum Smith surrendered themselves to the governor of Illinois and were placed in Carthage Jail, was among a handful of men who went with them. By the afternoon of 27 June 1844, most had been sent to take care of certain matters of business, leaving only John Taylor and Willard Richards with the Prophet and his brother Hyrum. That afternoon following dinner, the jailer, knowing of the mob outside, suggested that they would be safer in the cell of the jail. Turning to Willard Richards, Joseph asked, “If we go into the cell will you go with us?” To this Elder Richards responded:

“Brother Joseph, you did not ask me to cross the river with you … you did not ask me to come to Carthage … you did not ask me to come to jail with you—and do you think I would forsake you now? But I will tell you what I will do; if you are condemned to be hung for ‘treason,’ I will be hung in your stead, and you shall go free.” (B. H. Roberts, A Comprehensive History of the Church, 2:283.)

Strong and intelligent men do not demonstrate that kind of love for a charlatan or a fraud. That kind of love comes of God and the recognition of integrity in men. It is an expression of the spirit and reflects the example of the Savior, who gave his life for all men and who declared, “Greater love hath no man than this, that a man lay down his life for his friends.” (John 15:13.)

There were so many others—the Youngs, the Kimballs, the Taylors, the Snows, the Pratts, and more upon more—who when they first met Joseph Smith seemed ordinary and unpromising, but who under the power of the truths and priesthood that Joseph Smith restored became giants in achievement through their service to others.

Finally, what of Joseph Smith’s prophecies? There were more than a few, and they were fulfilled. Among the most notable was the revelation on the Civil War. You are familiar with it; it was spoken on Christmas Day, 1832. There were many high-minded men and women who deplored the institution of slavery then common in the South, and there was much talk of abolition. But who but a prophet of God would have dared to say, thirty-nine years before it was to happen, that “war [would] be poured out upon all nations,” beginning “at the rebellion of South Carolina,” and that “the Southern States [would] be divided against the Northern States”? (D&C 87:1–3.) This remarkable prediction saw its fulfillment with the firing on Fort Sumter in Charleston Harbor in 1861. How could Joseph Smith have possibly foreseen with such accuracy the event that was to come thirty-nine years after he spoke of it? Only by the spirit of prophecy which was in him.

Or again, consider the equally remarkable prophecy concerning the movement of the Saints to these mountain valleys. The Saints were then living in Nauvoo and its sister community across the Mississippi and were enjoying a prosperity they had not previously known. They were building a temple and other substantial structures. Their new homes were of brick, constructed to endure. And yet one day in August of 1842, while visiting in Montrose, Joseph prophesied “that the Saints would continue to suffer much affliction and would be driven to the Rocky Mountains, many would apostatize, others would be put to death by our persecutors or lose their lives in consequence of exposure or disease, and [speaking to those who were present] some of you will live to go and assist in making settlements and build cities and see the Saints become a mighty people in the midst of the Rocky Mountains.” (History of the Church, 5:85.)

Viewed in the context of the time and circumstances, this statement is nothing less than remarkable. Only a man speaking with a knowledge beyond his own could have uttered words which would be so literally fulfilled.

And what of this prophecy, which so magnificently foresaw the joyous destiny of this church?

“Our missionaries are going forth to different nations … the Standard of Truth has been erected; no unhallowed hand can stop the work from progressing; persecutions may rage, mobs may combine, armies may assemble, calumny may defame, but the truth of God will go forth boldly, nobly, and independent, till it has penetrated every continent, visited every clime, swept every country, and sounded in every ear, till the purposes of God shall be accomplished, and the Great Jehovah shall say the work is done.” (History of the Church, 4:540.)

Great was the Prophet Joseph Smith’s vision. It encompassed all the peoples of mankind, wherever they live, and all generations who have walked the earth and passed on. How can anyone, past or present, speak against him except out of ignorance? They have not tasted of his words, they have not pondered about him, nor prayed about him. As one who has done these things, I add my own words of testimony that he was and is a prophet of God, raised up as an instrument in the hands of the Almighty to usher in a new and final gospel dispensation. Of the Prophet Joseph Smith, we could say:

“When a man gives his life for the cause he has advocated, he meets the highest test of his honesty and sincerity that his own or any future generation can in fairness ask. When he dies for the testimony he has borne, all malicious tongues should ever after be silent, and all voices hushed in reverence before a sacrifice so complete.” (Ezra Dalby, Ms, Dec. 12, 1926.)

It is most fitting that today we sing in tribute to Joseph Smith, the great latter-day servant of our Lord and Master Jesus Christ:

Great is his glory and endless his priesthood,

Ever and ever the keys he will hold.

Faithful and true, he will enter his kingdom,

Crowned in the midst of the prophets of old.

(Hymns, No. 147.)

OK Thanks for the reply. Just to clarify, I said nothing critical about Joseph Smith. I neither maligned him or complained. I simply shared my discomfort. Nothing more. 

[Robert F. Smith]

5 hours ago, pogi said:

With over 100,000 reported infections world-wide and over 4,000 deaths - with the majority of deaths from those who are older or who have chronic health conditions, and literally zero reported deaths for infants or children under 10 years old - I think we have a fairly reliable picture of who is most susceptible.  If children were at greater risk because of their weakened immune systems, we simply would know that by now.   In fact, only around 2% of total reported cases are of children under 10 years of age.  Not only does it appear to be less deadly, but it appears to not present with symptoms as much in children (very similar to Hep A).  We see the same patter in the cousins of this coronavirus - both MERS and SARS are not as prevalent or severe in children too. 

I didn't say children.  I said babies, and their immune systems are just not up to the level of children and adults.  I don't have any faith at all in the worldwide stats we have thus far.  We need to see the stats on epidemiology in the USA after a couple of months have gone by.  Only then will we know the facts.

There are no babies in the elderly homes in Washington State or on the cruise lines.  There are no babies in Congress, where several members have now self-quarantined.  Your USA stats are premature.

Edited March 10, 2020 by Robert F. Smith

[Robert F. Smith]

5 hours ago, Navidad said:

It is interesting you mention "Praise to the Man." I remember my uncomfortable reaction the first time I heard it sung in an LDS worship service. It was the first time (that I remember) ever singing a praise hymn in a church worship service to a man instead of to a member of the Godhead. Isn't that kind of hagiography of a human being what helps leads some non-LDS Christians to think that members of the LDS church "worship" Joseph Smith? Isn't that in the case of Hymn 27 in a worship hymnal in a worship service in a worship building kind of getting close to validating their claim? I must admit I am still shaking a bit from one of yesterday's two sacrament talks in our ward. The entire talk was about Joseph Smith. In my thinking, it walked a very fine line as appropriate in a worship service. Praising a man from a chapel podium during a worship hour just did not seem appropriate. Perhaps I would understand it better if I was a Catholic talking about Saint somebody. It almost sounded that way to me . . . she was extolling the saintliness of Joseph Smith. Do members of the church all agree on how Joseph Smith is to be beatified, especially in a formal worship service? I could certainly understand extolling the virtues of the founder of a faith in a Friday night fireside, but a Sunday morning formal Sacrament service?  Please, I am simply sharing my reaction to yesterday and to singing a praise hymn to a man in church - very much outside my comfort zone. I acknowledge that. 

LDS sacrament meetings are not so much "worship" services as they are pious expressions of faith.  Once the holy ordinance of the Sacrament of the Lord's Supper is over, one may have a testimony meeting in which members express their beliefs and personal affirmations of those beliefs.  You'll seldom hear a professional priestly homily, or a pastor taking a single verse as his text.  Songs sung range from phrases from the Psalter to the loveliness of the morning of the First Vision, to the Saints coming West (some dying on the way), to praising the man who communed with Jehovah, even to traditional Christmas and patriotic American hymns.  The Hymnal is a grab bag of songs for various occasions, the Sacrament hymns of course the most holy.

Remember, the LDS Godhead is immanent, not distant and formidable as in Protestantism.  In your tradition, God is wholly other.  In our tradition, he is a close relative, our literal Father.

The Jews often have songs about their prophets and about prophetic events:  When I lived in Israel, I learned the Hebrew song Eliyahu haNavi ("Elijah the Prophet"), among other songs with a biblical focus.  Like Joseph Smith, Elijah was just a man.  Then there was Maoz Tzur, Yeshuati, ("O Mighty Rock of My Salvation"), a liturgical hymn for Hanukka.  You'll notice the Hebrew name of Jesus hiding there in plain sight. 

 

[Scott Lloyd]

2 hours ago, Navidad said:

OK Thanks for the reply. Just to clarify, I said nothing critical about Joseph Smith. I neither maligned him or complained. I simply shared my discomfort. Nothing more. 

I recognize that you said nothing negative about Joseph Smith per se. You only said we should not be singing “Praise to the Man” in our worship services. 
 

Some of our Church members have the same opinion. They are as wrong in this as you are.

[pogi]

1 hour ago, Robert F. Smith said:

I didn't say children.  I said babies, and their immune systems are just not up to the level of children and adults.  I don't have any faith at all in the worldwide stats we have thus far.  We need to see the stats on epidemiology in the USA after a couple of months have gone by.  Only then will we know the facts.

There are no babies in the elderly homes in Washington State or on the cruise lines.  There are no babies in Congress, where several members have now self-quarantined.  Your USA stats are premature.

I said "children under 10" - babies and infants are included in that data.  Making claims like this can stoke unnecessary fear and panic in the hearts of parents of babies and infants who don't know better. The last thing we need is to instigate even more hysteria than we already have.  It becomes reckless when it is unfounded.  The CDC and WHO all agree, there is no reason for parents to fear.  We have absolutely no reason or evidence to suggest otherwise. 

To spread such claims is particularly harmful when there are reasons that sound believable, such as "babies have weak immune systems".  That is a true statement and thus sounds reasonable enough to make such a conclusion...until you actually understand the science.  The lay person who doesn't understand the many factors in play in how disease might affect infants, will likely run with it - but it is not based in sound medical science.  It is, I hate to say it, "fake news". There is literally no evidence or data to support it and it is based on bad science.  It is easy to prove false that babies are more susceptible to all disease because of their weak immune systems.  I many cases, they are actually less vulnerable. 

I don't have faith in the worldwide stats either.  I have even less faith in US stats.  We are not even close to being up to par with the rest of the world with testing and reporting.  It is embarrassing, frankly, that the wealthiest and arguably the most developed nation in the world can't test and track the disease like China has.  To be honest, I am sick right now with every single symptom of Covid-19.  With my line of work, I see frequent return travelers/cruisers who go all over the world, I very easily could have been infected from a return traveler from a risk area.  Guess what?  They won't test me.  It's a freaking joke!  In Utah, they will only test you if you have high fever and shortness of breath (the vast minority of cases) or if you personally have traveled to a risk area and have any symptoms.  Well, that leaves an enormous gap for the virus to spread in our community undetected.  The stats are simply wrong.  But the limited data we do have is significant enough and good enough to make good judgments about who is at greatest risk.  Out of 4,000 reported deaths world wide, not one single child under 10 has been included in that tally (that includes "babies").  Unless there is some world-wide conspiracy to not report infant and children deaths, it seems outrageous to suggest that babies are more vulnerable.  How do you explain those numbers if they are higher risk as you claim?  Those at higher risk will be dying more, period.  This is not isolated to cruise ships and elderly homes in Washington. Why aren't we seeing any babies dying...anywhere?

You trust the stats enough to believe that older people and those with chronic disease are at greater risk, right?  So, why do you not trust those same stats when it comes to babies?  The stats we have clearly are not giving us the big picture, but the numbers we do have give us a big enough picture to say with an extremely high degree of confidence that newborns, infants, and children are not at high risk for severe disease or death. 

Edited March 10, 2020 by pogi

[mfbukowski]

6 hours ago, Navidad said:

It is interesting you mention "Praise to the Man." I remember my uncomfortable reaction the first time I heard it sung in an LDS worship service. It was the first time (that I remember) ever singing a praise hymn in a church worship service to a man instead of to a member of the Godhead. Isn't that kind of hagiography of a human being what helps leads some non-LDS Christians to think that members of the LDS church "worship" Joseph Smith? Isn't that in the case of Hymn 27 in a worship hymnal in a worship service in a worship building kind of getting close to validating their claim? I must admit I am still shaking a bit from one of yesterday's two sacrament talks in our ward. The entire talk was about Joseph Smith. In my thinking, it walked a very fine line as appropriate in a worship service. Praising a man from a chapel podium during a worship hour just did not seem appropriate. Perhaps I would understand it better if I was a Catholic talking about Saint somebody. It almost sounded that way to me . . . she was extolling the saintliness of Joseph Smith. Do members of the church all agree on how Joseph Smith is to be beatified, especially in a formal worship service? I could certainly understand extolling the virtues of the founder of a faith in a Friday night fireside, but a Sunday morning formal Sacrament service?  Please, I am simply sharing my reaction to yesterday and to singing a praise hymn to a man in church - very much outside my comfort zone. I acknowledge that. 

I do not sing that song. I will stand or sit, whatever the congregations do, I do not want to "protest", I just do not sing.

I too think it is inappropriate 

[Scott Lloyd]

3 minutes ago, mfbukowski said:

I do not sing that song. I will stand or sit, whatever the congregations do, I do not want to "protest", I just do not sing.

I too think it is inappropriate 

As I said, you are wrong. 

[Calm]

46 minutes ago, pogi said:

be honest, I am sick right now with every single symptom of Covid-19.

You in Utah?  Can’t keep track of those who don’t constantly mention it like me. 
 

I assume your bosses are letting you stay home from work?  Take care of yourself. 

Edited March 10, 2020 by Calm

[mfbukowski]

17 minutes ago, Scott Lloyd said:

As I said, you are wrong. 

Have you gone "Ahab" on me? 🤪

[pogi]

20 minutes ago, Calm said:

You in Utah?  Can’t keep track of those who don’t constantly mention it like me. 
 

I assume your bosses are letting you stay home from work?  Take care of yourself. 

Thanks!  Yes, I’m in Utah.  Yes, I have been self quarantining and not going to work.  Hard to do with two small kids in a small house, but I am doing the best I can.

I have low grade fever (99.8), productive cough (lower respiratory which is more concerning if it is Covid), sore throat (it hurts to cough), severe body aches (worse than I have ever had to the point that they are painful and can’t sleep) chills, nasty headache and fatigue, and even joint pain that I’ve never experienced before.  It’s not a fun one! Ibuprofen helps some though.  I don’t have any of the severe symptoms of high fever or shortness of breath, which I am grateful for.  It could be anything, including moderate flu, but I wouldn’t be surprised if it was Covid to be honest.  I guarantee it is far more widespread in the states than is being reported. 

[Scott Lloyd]

21 minutes ago, pogi said:

Thanks!  Yes, I’m in Utah.  Yes, I have been self quarantining and not going to work.  Hard to do with two small kids in a small house, but I am doing the best I can.

I have low grade fever (99.8), productive cough (lower respiratory which is more concerning if it is Covid), sore throat (it hurts to cough), severe body aches (worse than I have ever had to the point that they are painful and can’t sleep) chills, nasty headache and fatigue, and even joint pain that I’ve never experienced before.  It’s not a fun one! Ibuprofen helps some though.  I don’t have any of the severe symptoms of high fever or shortness of breath, which I am grateful for.  It could be anything, including moderate flu, but I wouldn’t be surprised if it was Covid to be honest.  I guarantee it is far more widespread in the states than is being reported. 

Sounds like every case of flu I ever had. 

[pogi]

35 minutes ago, Scott Lloyd said:

Sounds like every case of flu I ever had. 

Yep, it very well could be.  It could also be pneumonia, a bad cold, or several other diseases that cause “flu-like symptoms”, including Covid-19.  But you can’t really distinguish based on symptoms alone.  They can look identical in presentation.  All I am saying is that it wouldn’t surprise me if it was Covid given my work and given how poorly this is being monitored in the states.

Edited March 10, 2020 by pogi

[randy]

1 hour ago, Scott Lloyd said:

As I said, you are wrong. 

I could not agree more.  I love that hymn!  I believe it is quite appropriate to sing in our Sacrament meetings.  When I sing those words, in my minds eye I see the Savior "communing" with the Prophet Joseph in the Sacred Grove, in the Kirtland Temple, in Liberty Jail...and in the Jailers Room at Carthage Jail.  When I sing and ponder over the message of that hymn...I am given to know that I too...can "commune with Jehovah"!    That hymn strengthens and solidifies my hope in and my testimony of...my Savior.  I LOVE IT!

[Bernard Gui]

10 hours ago, Navidad said:

It is interesting you mention "Praise to the Man." I remember my uncomfortable reaction the first time I heard it sung in an LDS worship service. It was the first time (that I remember) ever singing a praise hymn in a church worship service to a man instead of to a member of the Godhead. Isn't that kind of hagiography of a human being what helps leads some non-LDS Christians to think that members of the LDS church "worship" Joseph Smith? Isn't that in the case of Hymn 27 in a worship hymnal in a worship service in a worship building kind of getting close to validating their claim? I must admit I am still shaking a bit from one of yesterday's two sacrament talks in our ward. The entire talk was about Joseph Smith. In my thinking, it walked a very fine line as appropriate in a worship service. Praising a man from a chapel podium during a worship hour just did not seem appropriate. Perhaps I would understand it better if I was a Catholic talking about Saint somebody. It almost sounded that way to me . . . she was extolling the saintliness of Joseph Smith. Do members of the church all agree on how Joseph Smith is to be beatified, especially in a formal worship service? I could certainly understand extolling the virtues of the founder of a faith in a Friday night fireside, but a Sunday morning formal Sacrament service?  Please, I am simply sharing my reaction to yesterday and to singing a praise hymn to a man in church - very much outside my comfort zone. I acknowledge that. 
 

Quote

“Go Down Moses"

Go down, Moses, way down in Egypt land
Tell old Pharaoh to let my people go
When Israel was in Egypt land
Let my people go
Oppressed so hard they could not stand
Let my people go
So the lord said, "Go down, Moses, way down in Egypt land
Tell old Pharaoh to let my people go."
So Moses went to Egypt land
Let my people go
He made old Pharaoh understand
Let my people go
Yes, the Lord said, "Go down, Moses, way down in Egypt land.
Tell old Pharaoh to let my people go."
Thus spoke the Lord," bold Moses said
Let my people go
"If not, I'll smite your firstborns dead."
Let my people go
God, the Lord said, "Go down, Moses, way down in Egypt land
Tell old Pharaoh to let my people go."
Way down in Egypt land
Tell old Pharaoh to let my people go

Quote

HYMN TO ST. PAUL

Hail! St. Paul of Tarsus, from the tribe of Benjamin. 
You were called and set apart: Apostle of Good News!

Verse 1 
From that midday at Damascus, to your martyrdom in Rome, 
You have taught and lived the message: JESUS CHRIST IS LORD! 
It was He, the Risen Savior, whom you met along that road. 
You have preached it and you wrote it. 
We Paulinians do believe: JESUS CHRIST IS LORD!

Verse 2 
There is joy in human sorrow. There is love in every heart. 
There is no fear of tomorrow: JESUS CHRIST IS LORD! 
It was from the cross our father made Him triumph over all. 
None can change it now, nor break it. 
We Paulinians do believe: JESUS CHRIST IS LORD!

Hail! St. Paul of Tarsus, patron of Paulinian Schools, 
Win Paulinians who are living: Heralds of Good News

Quote

Ave Maria Latin Text (several musical settings)

Ave Maria, gratia plena, Dominus tecum.
Benedicta tu in mulieribus,
et benedictus fructus ventris tui, Iesus.
Sancta Maria, Mater Dei,
ora pro nobis peccatoribus,
nunc et in hora mortis nostrae. Amen.

Quote

Hymn to St. Joseph

Dear St. Joseph, pure and gentle, 
Guardian of the Saviour child, 
Treading with the virgin mother, 
Egypt's deserts rough and wild.

Chorus:
Hail, St. Joseph, spouse of Mary, 
Blessed above all saints on high,
When the death-shades round us gather, 
Teach, oh, teach us how to die.

He who rested on thy bosom
Is by countless saints adored; 
Prostrate angels in His presence 
Sing hosannas to their Lord.

Now to thee no gift refusing,
Jesus stoops to hear thy prayer;
Then, dear saint, from thy fair dwelling, 
Give to us a father's care.

Dear St. Joseph, kind and loving,
Stretch to us a helping hand;
Guide us through life's toils and sorrows
Safely to the distant land.

In the strife of life be near us,
And in death, oh, hover nigh,
Let our souls on thy sweet bosom
To their home of gladness fly.

Thou hast known a pilgrim's sorrows,
But thy day of toil is o'er;
Help us while we journey onward 
Lead us to the peaceful shore.

Hail St. Joseph, just and holy,
Loving children breathe thy name;
Here below, through toil and danger,
Love and care from thee we claim.

Quote

John the Herald of Christ

Words: Isaac Watts

1. John was the prophet of the Lord
To go before his face;
The herald which the Prince of Peace
Sent to prepare his ways.

2. "Behold the Lamb of God," he cries,
"That takes our guilt away;
I saw the Spirit o'er his head,
On his baptizing day.

3. "Be every vale exalted high,
Sink every mountain low;
The proud must stoop, and humble souls
Shall his salvation know.

4. "Behold the Morning Star arise,
Ye that in darkness sit;
He marks the path that leads to peace,
And guides our doubtful feet."

Quote

O pure Reformers! not in vain
Your trust in human kind;
The good which bloodshed could not gain,
Your peaceful zeal shall find.

The truths ye urge are borne abroad
By every wind and tide;
The voice of nature and of God
Speaks out upon your side.

The weapons which your hands have found
Are those which Heaven hath wrought,
Light, Truth, and Love,—your battle-ground,
The free, broad field of Thought.

O, may no selfish purpose break
The beauty of your plan,
Nor lie from throne or altar shake
Your steady faith in man.

Press on! and if we may not share
The glory of your fight,
We’ll ask at least, in earnest prayer,
God’s blessing on the Right.

Quote

Ut queant laxis
For thy spirit, holy John, to chasten
Lips sin-polluted, fettered tongues to loosen;
So by thy children might thy deeds of wonder
Meetly be chanted.

Lo! a swift herald, from the skies descending,
Bears to thy father promise of thy greatness;
How he shall name thee, what thy future story,
Duly revealing.

Scarcely believing message so transcendent, 
Him for a season power of speech forsaketh, 
Till, at thy wondrous birth, again returneth
Voice to the voiceless.

The heavenly citizens celebrate you
with lauds, one God and at once triune;
we also come imploring forgiveness;
spare us among the redeemed.

Thou, in thy mother's womb all darkly cradled,
Knewest thy Monarch, biding in His chamber,
Whence the two parents, through their children's merits,
Mysteries uttered.

Praise to the Father, to the Son begotten,
And to the Spirit, equal power. possessing,
One God whose glory, through the lapse of ages,
Ever resoundeth. 
Amen.

Quote

1 I sing a song of the saints of God,
patient and brave and true,
who toiled and fought and lived and died
for the Lord they loved and knew.
And one was a doctor, and one was a queen,
and one was a shepherdess on the green:
they were all of them saints of God, and I mean,
God helping, to be one too.

2 They loved their Lord so dear, so dear,
and God’s love made them strong;
and they followed the right, for Jesus’ sake,
the whole of their good lives long.
And one was a soldier, and one was a priest,
and one was slain by a fierce wild beast:
and there’s not any reason, no, not the least,
why I shouldn’t be one too.

3 They lived not only in ages past;
there are hundreds of thousands still;
the world is bright with the joyous saints
who love to do Jesus’ will.
You can meet them in school, or in lanes, or at sea,
in church, or in trains, or in shops, or at tea;
for the saints of God are just folk like me,
and I mean to be one too.

Would you also object to talks and songs about Moses, Joseph, Mary, Paul, The Reformers, John the Baptist, etc.?

Edited March 10, 2020 by Bernard Gui

[Tacenda]

7 hours ago, pogi said:

Thanks!  Yes, I’m in Utah.  Yes, I have been self quarantining and not going to work.  Hard to do with two small kids in a small house, but I am doing the best I can.

I have low grade fever (99.8), productive cough (lower respiratory which is more concerning if it is Covid), sore throat (it hurts to cough), severe body aches (worse than I have ever had to the point that they are painful and can’t sleep) chills, nasty headache and fatigue, and even joint pain that I’ve never experienced before.  It’s not a fun one! Ibuprofen helps some though.  I don’t have any of the severe symptoms of high fever or shortness of breath, which I am grateful for.  It could be anything, including moderate flu, but I wouldn’t be surprised if it was Covid to be honest.  I guarantee it is far more widespread in the states than is being reported. 

So sorry you're going through that. Here is a list that hopefully will help:

 

[pogi]

1 hour ago, Tacenda said:

So sorry you're going through that. Here is a list that hopefully will help:

 

Thanks.  That is a misleading list though.  Those are simply the primary indicators of severe disease with Covid.  The vast majority of cases don’t actually present with shortness of breath or difficulty breathing.  Those are the symptoms you have to have for them to test for Covid in the states, but it can, and mostly does present with all of the symptoms listed in the flu.  They are trying to screen who is being tested because of limited supplies and poor organizational efforts.  We simply are dropping the ball.

https://www.google.com/amp/s/www.hopkinsmedicine.org/health/conditions-and-diseases/coronavirus/coronavirus-disease-2019-vs-the-flu%3famp=true

Edited March 10, 2020 by pogi

[pogi]

5 hours ago, Bernard Gui said:

Would you also object to...songs about...Joseph, Mary, Paul?

Do you mean Peter, Paul, and Mary?  I wouldn’t object.

[Bernard Gui]

17 minutes ago, pogi said:

Thanks.  That is a misleading list though.  Those are simply the primary indicators of severe disease with Covid.  The vast majority of cases don’t actually present with shortness of breath or difficulty breathing.  Those are the symptoms you have to have for them to test for Covid in the states, but it can, and mostly does present with all of the symptoms listed in the flu.  They are trying to screen who is being tested because of limited supplies and poor organizational efforts.  We simply are dropping the ball.   Just look how Trump is handling the whole thing.  It’s a joke!  It has been said that Covid is Trump’s Katrina. I think that will prove to be true.

https://www.google.com/amp/s/www.hopkinsmedicine.org/health/conditions-and-diseases/coronavirus/coronavirus-disease-2019-vs-the-flu%3famp=true

So sorry you are ill, but please, don’t politicize a world-side virus epidemic. 

[Scott Lloyd]

20 minutes ago, Bernard Gui said:

So sorry you are ill, but please, don’t politicize a world-side virus epidemic. 

Agreed. We need to get through this thing together, so we ought not be making public comments that are sure to piss people off. 

[Scott Lloyd]

5 hours ago, Bernard Gui said:

Would you also object to talks and songs about Moses, Joseph, Mary, Paul, The Reformers, John the Baptist, etc.?

Thanks for these suggestions. 
 

Not sure whether this one is ever sung in worship services, but it did come to mind:

Intro 1 Ezekiel connected dem dry bones, Ezekiel connected dem dry bones, Ezekiel in the Valley of Dry Bones, Now hear the word of the Lord.   Verse 1 Toe bone connected to the foot bone Foot bone connected to the heel bone Heel bone connected to the ankle bone Ankle bone connected to the shin bone Shin bone connected to the knee bone Knee bone connected to the thigh bone Thigh bone connected to the hip bone Hip bone connected to the back bone Back bone connected to the shoulder bone Shoulder bone connected to the neck bone Neck bone connected to the head bone Now hear the word of the Lord.   Chorus Dem bones, dem bones gonna walk around. Dem bones, dem bones gonna walk around. Dem bones, dem bones gonna walk around. Now hear the word of the Lord.

Intro 2 Ezekiel disconnected dem dry bones, Ezekiel disconnected dem dry bones, Ezekiel in the Valley of Dry Bones, Now hear the word of the Lord.   Verse 2 Head bone (dis)connected from the neck bone Neck bone connected from the shoulder bone Shoulder bone connected from the back bone Back bone connected from the hip bone Hip bone connected from the thigh bone Thigh bone connected from the knee bone Knee bone connected from the shin bone Shin bone connected from the ankle bone Ankle bone connected from the heel bone Heel bone connected from the foot bone Foot bone connected from the toe bone Now hear the word of the Lord.   Chorus Dem bones, dem bones gonna rise again. Dem bones, dem bones gonna rise again. Dem bones, dem bones gonna rise again. Now hear the word of the Lord.   Finale Dem bones, dem bones, dem dry bones. Dem bones, dem bones, dem dry bones. Dem bones, dem bones, dem dry bones. Now hear the word of the Lord.

[pogi]

44 minutes ago, Bernard Gui said:

So sorry you are ill, but please, don’t politicize a world-side virus epidemic. 

Thank you, but I could care less about party politics.  That’s NOT what this is about for me.  If I think the monitoring of the virus is being poorly managed are you going to accuse me of “politicizing” an epidemic, or is it just because I mentioned “Trump” specifically? We shouldn’t be silent and pretend like everything is being handled fine, when it is not. This is more about the proper monitoring of a world-wide health epidemic than it is about “politicizing” anything.  Our president is a political figure, that is true, but he is also responsible for managing this situation.  Is it seriously off limits to  talk about how it is being handled?  

I can see where I may have overstepped in talking about potential political consequences in comparing it to Katrina, but I don’t think that assessing the response is party politics, but I have exited the post to make it less political sounding.

Edited March 10, 2020 by pogi

[Scott Lloyd]

5 minutes ago, pogi said:

Thank you, but I could care less about party politics.  That’s NOT what this is about for me.  If I think the monitoring of the virus is being poorly managed are you going to accuse me of “politicizing” an epidemic, or is it just because I mentioned “Trump” specifically? We shouldn’t be silent and pretend like everything is being handled fine, when it is not. This is more about the proper monitoring of a world-wide health epidemic than it is about “politicizing” anything.  Our president is a political figure, that is true, but he is also responsible for managing this situation.  Is it seriously off limits to  talk about how it is being handled?  

I can see where I may have overstepped in talking about potential political consequences in comparing it to Katrina, but I don’t think that assessing the response is party politics.

I’ve been paying attention to the frequent updates and news conferences from the task force under Vice President Pence. If and when I see clear indication of mismanagement or neglect, I’ll be right there with you. But so far, I’ve not seen it. Just partisan bellyaching from some who gleefully anticipate the efforts at containment will fail just so it will bring down Trump’s presidency. A reprehensible motive, in my view. Shame on them. During earlier times, we in this country it through periods of war and crisis by pulling together; we need to do the same now. 
 

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