So at church I teach the 12-13 year old young men. Today I ended up teaching the 12-18 year olds, and I have to say that they are some rather remarkable young men. Every once in a while I try to avoid teaching using the manual and just try to work off of what the young men actually want to learn about. Today was one of those days.
We started by wanting to learn about “Mammon.” A quick iPhone search revealed what “Mammon” actually means. Since it appears in Matthew 6:24, it’s worth learning about. So we discovered that Mammon actually refers to the personification of greed, or the want of money. The conversation evolved from there. Eventually I got around to talking about Thomas Jefferson noting that I had found an original version of the Declaration of Independence. Next we drew on D&C 101:80:
And for this purpose have I established the Constitution of this land, by the hands of wise men whom I raised up unto this very purpose, and redeemed the land…
I had never thought of it until I was teaching it, but what does “being raised up” by the Lord look like? That question became the subject of the class from that point forward. We talked about how the prophetic attention, scriptures, and good tutoring through parents, and religious leaders means that they, in their generation, are being raised up for some great thing.
After I asked what more you could want from the young men, one remarked, “I wish I had super powers.” Another remarked how he wanted a better body. A third remarked how he wanted the sealed portions of the Book of Mormon revealed.
1. Super Powers: I had him read D&C 13.
2. Better Body: I had him read D&C 89.
3. I believe the answer to this was intended only for that audience, and will not share it.
I felt as though I was certainly lead by the spirit while teaching. It’s not a testament to any greatness I may have, but the greatness of the young men whom I teach that was illustrated today. I was happy to be a part of it, and I’m happy to share what I know with you.
I have mentioned to others that advertising a “Gun Free Zone” only advertises a “soft target” for criminals to attack. Someone made a rather nice parody of this concept:
This article contains a great methodology for understanding gospel truths. This is a very smart scholarly model that can be applied to any subject you want to learn. Enjoy!
Elder Dallin H. Oaks
Foundation for Ancient Research and Mormon Studies Annual Dinner Provo, Utah, October 29, 1993
Some who term themselves believing Latter-day Saints are advocating that Latter-day Saints should “abandon claims that [the Book of Mormon] is a historical record of the ancient peoples of the Americas.”1 They are promoting the feasibility of reading and using the Book of Mormon as nothing more than a pious fiction with some valuable contents. These practitioners of so-called “higher criticism” raise the question of whether the Book of Mormon, which our prophets have put forward as the preeminent scripture of this dispensation, is fact or fable—history or just a story.
The historicity—historical authenticity—of the Book of Mormon is an issue so fundamental that it rests first upon faith in the Lord Jesus Christ, which is the first principle in this, as in all other matters. However, on the subject of the historicity of the Book of Mormon, there are many subsidiary issues that could each be the subject of a book. It is not my purpose to comment on any of these lesser issues, either those that are said to confirm the Book of Mormon or those that are said to disprove it.
Those lesser issues are worthy of attention. In an earlier address to this group, Elder Neal A. Maxwell quoted Austin Farrer’s explanation:
Though argument does not create conviction, lack of it destroys belief. What seems to be proved may not be embraced; but what no one shows the ability to defend is quickly abandoned. Rational argument does not create belief, but it maintains a climate in which belief may flourish. (Austin Farrer on C. S. Lewis.)
In these remarks I will seek to use rational argument, but I will not rely on any proofs. I will approach the question of the historicity of the Book of Mormon from the standpoint of faith and revelation. I maintain that the issue of the historicity of the Book of Mormon is basically a difference between those who rely exclusively on scholarship and those who rely on a combination of scholarship, faith, and revelation. Those who rely exclusively on scholarship reject revelation and fulfill Nephi’s prophecy that in the last days men “shall teach with their learning, and deny the Holy Ghost, which giveth utterance” (2 Ne. 28:4). The practitioners of that approach typically focus on a limited number of issues, like geography or “horses” or angelic delivery or nineteenth century language patterns. They ignore or gloss over the incredible complexity of the Book of Mormon record. Those who rely on scholarship, faith, and revelation are willing to look at the entire spectrum of issues, content as well as vocabulary, revelation as well as excavation.
Speaking for a moment as one whose profession is advocacy, I suggest that if one is willing to acknowledge the importance of faith and the reality of a realm beyond human understanding, the case for the Book of Mormon is the stronger case to argue. The case against the historicity of the Book of Mormon has to prove a negative. You don’t prove a negative by prevailing on one debater’s point or by establishing some subsidiary arguments.
For me, this obvious insight goes back over forty years to the first class I took in the Book of Mormon at BYU. The class was titled, somewhat boldly, the “Archaeology of the Book of Mormon.” In retrospect, I think it should have been labelled something like “An Anthropologist Looks at a Few Subjects of Interest to Readers of the Book of Mormon.” Here I was introduced to the idea that the Book of Mormon is not a history of all of the people who have lived on the continents of North and South America in all ages of the earth. Up to that time, I had assumed that it was. If that were the claim of the Book of Mormon, any piece of historical, archaeological, or linguistic evidence to the contrary would weigh in against the Book of Mormon, and those who rely exclusively on scholarship would have a promising position to argue.
In contrast, if the Book of Mormon only purports to be an account of a few peoples who inhabited a portion of the Americas during a few millennia in the past, the burden of argument changes drastically. It is no longer a question of all versus none; it is a question of some versus none. In other words, in the circumstance I describe, the opponents of historicity must prove that the Book of Mormon has no historical validity for any peoples who lived in the Americas in a particular time frame, a notoriously difficult exercise. You do not prevail on that proposition by proving that a particular eskimo culture represents migrations from Asia. The opponents of the historicity of the Book of Mormon must prove that the people whose religious life it records did not live anywhere in the Americas.
Another way of explaining the strength of the positive position on the historicity of the Book of Mormon is to point out that we who are its proponents are content with a standoff on this question. Honest investigators will conclude that there are so many evidences that the Book of Mormon is an ancient text that they cannot confidently resolve the question against its authenticity, despite some unanswered questions that seem to support the negative determination. In that circumstance, the proponents of the Book of Mormon can settle for a draw or a hung jury on the question of historicity and take a continuance until the controversy can be retried in another forum.
One of the smartest candidates I know sent me this and I felt it was worth sharing.
October 21, 2009
The patient was wheeled into the emergency room. The paramedics who brought him filed a report describing that he had been weak and lethargic. They had been unable to revive him at home, and had decided that he needed hospital attention. The emergency room staff took his vitals, and set him up in a treatment room.
The attending physician arrived, looked over the chart, and ordered a transfusion, telling the family that the patient needed a blood transfusion to help stimulate his recovery. So the nurse came in to hook up the IV lines for the procedure. She began by inserting one end of the line into his leg, carefully testing to ensure that she was drawing blood from the vein. Then she clamped the line. Next, she took the other end of the line and inserted it into the patient’s arm. Finally, she opened the clamp so the blood would flow from his leg to his arm.
The doctor entered, checked the arm, and cheerfully announced that all would be well.
It sounds like the plot of either a Marx Brothers’ movie or a cheap horror film, doesn’t it?
It’s not. It is the method used by the federal government to “stimulate” our economy.
Earlier this year, Washington politicians decided that they needed to help stimulate an economic recovery. So they passed a stimulus bill with a price tag of nearly a trillion dollars. They told us that they were pumping money into the economy to revive it. But Washington doesn’t have any money, and there was no outside donor.
The only place Washington could get the money to pump into America’s economy was FROM America’s economy. So they took money from one sector and put it into another sector of the same economic body. It’s like the patient above who had blood taken from his leg and inserted into his arm.
With two important differences.
The IV tube didn’t keep any of the blood. It all got moved from one part of the patient’s body to another. The patient may not have been assisted by the transfusion, but he didn’t lose anything either.
That is not true for the economic transfusion. The government kept the largest portion of the money they “moved.” So America’s economy was stimulated by having the federal government remove money from the private sector, retain over half of what was taken, and then replace what was left. This was not a cash transfusion, it was a cash transfer from the private sector to the government.
Second, the patient’s body would re-circulate the blood back to the leg almost immediately, so the movement caused by the transfusion was temporary.
But the federal government not only kept the largest portion of the money, it restricted the owners and uses of the part that did eventually get re-inserted into the private sector. Those who created the wealth being transfused never got it back. They suffered a permanent loss.
It’s as if the patient’s arm kept the blood inside it. Not only would the leg die from blood loss, but the resulting disease would eventually kill the arm, and therefore the patient, as well. America’s economy does not need, and may not survive, any more of Washington’s stimulation.
America’s economy needs the real stimulus that only the growth of business can provide. And that growth requires Washington’s economic physicians to get out of the emergency room and let those who can actually make the patient better do their jobs.
It’s good to have opponents, especially in the polical arena. I’m not advocating for a lack of decorum, but opponents are really good about pointing things out about people you wouldn’t know otherwise. Here’s a message from a campaign here in Oklahoma that stresses the importants of researching your representatives beyond their party affiliation. I’ll ask the question… do you know who represents you?
Enjoy!
Cole and Graham’s GOP; the Party of Failure. Ron Paul and the Liberty Candidate’s GOP; the Party of Freedom!
By RJ Harris
Coming off of stinging defeats in the last two national elections, the GOP has done all it can to convince everyone from the party faithful to the skeptical media to the previously disillusioned and now to the awaking body politic that the GOP can restore itself to its founding glory while leading the fight to restore our republic. Against this backdrop of promised “hope and change” remain bailout voters and big government progressives like Republican Senator Lindsey Graham and Republican Congressman Tom Cole. Both of these “Republicans” voted for bailouts and for stimulus packages prior to the financial collapse. Both of them have voted to fund un-declared wars and both of them have continued to support unconstitutional federal infringements into education and state sovereignty as well as unconstitutional expenditures on foreign aid. Cole has even gone so far as voting for Obama’s GIVE Act, which will eventually turn all of our college students into involuntary servants to the state. With people like Cole and Graham holding high office under the Republican banner, it is no wonder the Tea Party Patriots and 912 Marchers have shown the GOP as much contempt as they have the Democrats.
Fed up with the rhetoric and tyranny from these men, a primary challenger has emerged against Cole and a hostile crowd greeted Graham at his recent town hall meeting wherein he claimed that he was attempting to grow the GOP’s ranks while at the same time blasting the largest segment of new Republicans in a generation; the Ron Paul supporters. The media and GOP apologists zeroed in on the unruly behavior of the Paul supporters but the story only begins there. Congressman Paul has inspired more than one Congressional Candidate to challenge Cole and a few rabble-rousers to harass Senator Graham. Websites, facebook groups and local conservative groups are sounding the arrival of the grass-roots Liberty Candidates–Rand Paul, Adam Kokesh, RJ Harris (challenging Cole), Peter Schiff and many more. These candidates are popping up on the web and in the districts. It is almost as if a second “Grand Army of the Republic” is mustering to fight on behalf of individual liberty and state sovereignty one more time. So what Paul has actually inspired then is a genuine movement to retake the Congress and restore the Republic and not merely a handful of malcontents as some would have you believe.
In contrast we should ask what have Cole and Graham inspired? Where are the crowds and the candidates rallying to them and their message? How are men like these supposed to convince the Tea Party Patriots and 912 Marchers to rally to the GOP? When Cole, Graham and Co. were selling out their conservative principles one man among them stood out against the rising tide of socialism which is now rushing at us like a flood. By his example are the Liberty Candidates now able to distinguish themselves from the pretenders in the GOP ranks. Without Paul, and those he has inspired, the awaking body politic would be forced to vote third party to find new guards for their liberty. Without Paul; Cole and Graham would be getting away with their hypocrisies unchecked. Without Ron Paul the GOP would continue to be the party of failure instead of having the chance to restore itself as the party of Freedom.
So, it’s an off year, and I find it amazing that the people who the establishment said weren’t worth listening to, and failed to “win” have grown in influence. Seems to me that things like Liberty are becoming popular again. That’s a good thing.
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This article contains a great methodology for understanding gospel truths. This is a very smart scholarly model that can be applied to any subject you want to learn. Enjoy!
