Christmas, the holiday commemorating the birth of Jesus Christ, is celebrated by a majority of Christians on December 25 in the Gregorian calendar. But early Christians did not celebrate his birth, and no one knows on which date Jesus was actually born (some scholars believe that the actual date was in the early spring, placing it closer to Easter, the holiday commemorating his Resurrection). Encyclopædia Britannica, Inc.

April 6th

President Gordon B. Hinckley said, “In ancient times Christmas, commemorating the birth of the Christ child, was celebrated at this solstice season [on December 25]. Men had no knowledge of the time of His birth, and so they came to bond the celebration of Christmas with the celebration of the return of the sun. While we now know through revelation the time of the Savior’s birth, we observe the 25th of December with the rest of the Christian world.”

“As to the season of the year in which Christ was born, there is among the learned as great a diversity of opinion as that relating to the year itself. It is claimed by many Biblical scholars that December 25th, the day celebrated in Christendom as Christmas, cannot be the correct date. We believe April 6th to be the birthday of Jesus Christ as indicated in a revelation of the present dispensation already cited [D&C 20:1], in which that day is made without qualification the completion of the one thousand eight hundred and thirtieth year since the coming of the Lord in the flesh. This acceptance is admittedly based on faith in modern revelation, and in no wise is set forth as the result of chronological research or analysis. We believe that Jesus Christ was born in Bethlehem of Judea, April 6, B.C. 1.” James A. Talmage

Customs of the People are Vain:

Many of today’s celebrations of Christ have been adopted and ridiculed by evil people and pagans. Obviously there is the greater good we look upon for Easter and Christmas. For example here is a pagan tradition that has been held over from the Bible.

In Jeremiah we are warned not to worship and decorate trees. Jeremiah 10:1-5 says, “Hear ye the word which the Lord speaketh unto you, O house of Israel: Thus saith the Lord, Learn not the way of the heathen, and be not dismayed at the signs of heaven; for the heathen are dismayed at them. For the customs of the people are vain: for one cutteth a tree out of the forest, the work of the hands of the workman, with the axe. They deck it with silver and with gold; they fasten it with nails and with hammers, that it move not. They are upright as the palm tree, but speak not: they must needs be borne, because they cannot go. Be not afraid of them; for they cannot do evil, neither also is it in them to do good.”

What is a Puritan?

So who, then, were the Puritans? While the Separatists believed that the only way to live according to Biblical precepts was to leave the Church of England entirely, the Puritans thought they could reform the church from within. Sometimes called non-separating Puritans, this less radical group shared a lot in common with the Separatists, particularly a form of worship and self-organization called “the congregational way.”

In a congregational church, there is no prayer book, no formal creeds or belief statements, and the head of the church isn’t a Pope or the King, but Jesus Christ as revealed in the scriptures. Sabbath worship doesn’t include sermons and preaching, but extemporaneous “testifying” by the Holy Spirit. As an organizing principle, congregational churches are bound together by a “covenant” and make decisions democratically, including the selection of religious leaders.

The biggest difference between the Separatists and the Puritans is that the Puritans believed they could live out the congregational way in their local churches without abandoning the larger Church of England…

The Puritans ultimately decided to journey to the New World, too, but not for the same reasons as the Separatists. The Puritans, who already had some money, saw a favorable investment opportunity by owning land in America. And somewhat paradoxically, the Puritans also believed that by being far away from England, they could create the ideal English church.

“[The Puritan leader] John Winthrop talks about creating a church that will be a light to the nations,” says Oman. “The Pilgrims never really expressed that desire.”

When the Puritans settled the Massachusetts Bay Colony in 1630, they arrived in 17 ships carrying more than 1,000 passengers. They came with money and resources and divinely ordained arrogance. Just 10 years later, the Massachusetts Bay Colony was a Puritan stronghold of 20,000, while humble Plymouth was home to just 2,600 Pilgrims. Plymouth was fully swallowed up by Mass Bay just a few decades later.” What’s the Difference Between Puritans and Pilgrims? by DAVE ROOS See my blog titled PURITANS & PILGRIMS- SAME PEOPLE? Here

When Massachusetts Banned Christmas

“Ebenezer Scrooge and the Grinch had nothing on the 17th-century Puritans, who actually banned the public celebration of Christmas in the Massachusetts Bay Colony for an entire generation.

The pious Puritans who sailed from England in 1630 to found the Massachusetts Bay Colony brought with them something that might seem surprising for a group of devout Christians—contempt for Christmas. In a reversal of modern practices, the Puritans kept their shops and schools open and churches closed on Christmas, a holiday that some disparaged as “Foolstide.”

After the Puritans in England overthrew King Charles I in 1647, among their first items of business after chopping off the monarch’s head was to ban Christmas. Parliament decreed that December 25 should instead be a day of “fasting and humiliation” for Englishmen to account for their sins. The Puritans of New England eventually followed the lead of those in old England, and in 1659 the General Court of the Massachusetts Bay Colony made it a criminal offense to publicly celebrate the holiday and declared that “whosoever shall be found observing any such day as Christmas or the like, either by forbearing of labor, feasting, or any other way” was subject to a 5-shilling fine.

Why did the Puritans loathe Christmas? Stephen Nissenbaum, author of The Battle for Christmas, says it was partly because of theology and partly because of the rowdy celebrations that marked the holiday in the 1600s.

Editor’s Note: While most of us celebrate Christmas with the joy and happiness of our Savior coming down in flesh and blood, many of us just use it as time off work, or a day to get presents, or a time other than to worship our Savior. The Puritans felt some of the same feelings. I propose we all use EVERY day as a special day to celebrate the Savior’s birth, death, and resurrection, so daily we are thankful for life itself because of Jesus Christ.

History.com continues saying, “In their strict interpretation of the Bible, the Puritans noted that there was no scriptural basis for commemorating Christmas. “The Puritans tried to run a society in which legislation would not violate anything that the Bible said, and nowhere in the Bible is there a mention of celebrating the Nativity,” Nissenbaum says. The Puritans noted that scriptures did not mention a season, let alone a single day, that marked the birth of Jesus.

Even worse for the Puritans were the pagan roots of Christmas. Not until the fourth century A.D. did the church in Rome ordain the celebration of the Nativity on December 25, and that was done by co-opting existing pagan celebrations such as Saturnalia, an ancient Roman holiday of lights marked with drinking and feasting that coincided with the winter solstice. The noted Puritan minister Increase Mather wrote that Christmas occurred on December 25 not because “Christ was born in that month, but because the heathens’ Saturnalia was at that time kept in Rome, and they were willing to have those pagan holidays metamorphosed into Christian [ones].” According to Nissenbaum, “Puritans believed Christmas was basically just a pagan custom that the Catholics took over without any biblical basis for it. The holiday had everything to do with the time of year, the solstice and Saturnalia and nothing to do with Christianity.”

The pagan-like way in which Christmas was celebrated troubled the Puritans even more than the underlying theology. “Men dishonor Christ more in the 12 days of Christmas than in all the 12 months besides,” wrote 16th-century clergyman Hugh Latimer. Christmas in the 1600s was hardly a silent night, let alone a holy one. More befitting a rowdy spring break than a sacred occasion, Christmas revelers used the holiday as an excuse to feast, drink, gamble on dice and card games and engage in licentious behavior.

Trick or Treating??

In a Yuletide twist on trick-or-treating, men dressed as women, and vice versa, and went door-to-door demanding food or money in return for carols or Christmas wishes. “Bands of mostly young people and apprentices would go house to house and demand that the doors of prosperous people be open to them,” Nissenbaum says. “They felt they had a right to enter the houses of the wealthy and demand their high-quality food and drink—not meager handouts, but the stuff prosperous people would serve to their own families.” Those who failed to comply could be greeted with vandalism or violence.

Even after public commemoration of Christmas was once again legal in England following the restoration of the monarchy in 1660, the Yuletide ban remained firmly on the books in Massachusetts for an entire generation. Although outlawed in public, the celebration of Christmas endured in private homes, particularly in the fishing towns further afield from the center of Puritan power in Boston that Nissenbaum writes were “notorious for irreligion, heavy drinking and loose sexual activity.”

In his research, Nissenbaum found no records of any prosecutions under the 1659 law. “This was not the secret police going after everybody,” he says. “It’s clear from the wording of the ban that the Puritans weren’t really concerned with celebrating the holiday in a quiet way privately. It was for preventing disorders.”

The prohibition of public Christmas celebrations was unique to Massachusetts, and under the reign of King Charles II political pressure from the motherland steadily increased for the colony’s Puritan leaders to relax their intolerant laws or risk losing their royal charter. In 1681, the Massachusetts Bay Colony reluctantly repealed its most odious laws, including the ban on Christmas.

Hostility toward the public celebration of Christmas, however, remained in Massachusetts for years to come. When newly appointed royal governor Sir Edmund Andros attended Christmas Day religious services at Boston’s Town House in 1686, he prayed and sang hymns while flanked by Redcoats guarding against possible violent protests. Until well into the 1800s, businesses and schools in Massachusetts remained open on December 25 while many churches stayed closed. Not until 1856 did Christmas—along with Washington’s Birthday and the Fourth of July—finally become a public holiday in Massachusetts. History.com UPDATED:DEC 21, 2020 ORIGINAL:DEC 22, 2015

Quotes by Sir Isaac Newton

“Let me therefore beg of thee not to trust to the opinion of any man concerning these things, for so it is great odds but thou shalt be deceived… but search the scriptures thyself .” Sir Isaac Newton

“Newton saw two major flaws in the Christian doctrine of the Trinity: it was unsupported from the scriptures and it was illogical.” Michael White, Isaac Newton: The Last Sorcerer (Reading, MA: Addison-Wesley, 1997), 152.

“Apostasy was to begin by corrupting the truth about the relation of the Son to the Father in putting them equal.” Sir Isaac Newton

“For the prophets and apostles have foretold that as Israel often revolted and brake the covenant, and upon repentance renewed it, so there should be a falling away among the Christians, soon after the days of the Apostles, and that in the latter days God would destroy the impenitent revolters, and make a new covenant with his people. And the giving ear to the prophets is a fundamental character of the true church.” Isaac Newton, The Prophecies of Daniel and the Apocalypse, (Hyderabad, India: Printland Publishers, 1998) being a reprint of Observations on the Prophecies of Daniel and the Apocalypse of St. John, (London: Darby & Browne, 1733).

A Brief Survey of Sir Isaac Newton’s Views on Religion

Steven E. Jones, “A Brief Survey of Sir Isaac Newton’s Views on Religion,” in Converging Paths to Truth, ed. Michael D. Rhodes and J. Ward Moody (Provo, UT: Religious Studies Center, Brigham Young University; Salt Lake City: Deseret Book, Salt Lake City, 2011), 61–78.

“Newton was certainly one of the greatest scientists who ever lived. He laid out the three laws of motion in his extraordinary Principia Mathematica. He discovered the law of universal gravitation, the famous inverse-distance-squared law. He wrote much about light and optics after performing his own original experiments on light. He invented calculus. He rejected the authority of the Greek philosopher Aristotle and promoted experiment-based science.

But it is not commonly known that Newton was also a devout Christian who wrote extensively about Christianity. We learn from his writings that he deeply studied the Bible along with writings of early Christian leaders. Notably, Newton concluded that the dogma of a Triune god was false doctrine and therefore refused ordination in the Anglican Church, a most unpopular decision that almost cost him his position at Cambridge University. Newton also believed that a general apostasy from Christ’s doctrines occurred early on in the history of the Christian church, and he wrote that a restoration of the Lord’s church would come at some future time.

Although none of Newton’s religious writings were published during his lifetime, after his death in 1727, John Conduitt, executor of Newton’s will, [1] published some of his theological manuscripts. Eventually the remainder came forth when the manuscripts were auctioned off in 1936. [2] In this paper we will examine some of Newton’s copious writings on religion.

Introductory Thought Experiment

Let us consider a quick thought experiment to get us thinking along Newtonian lines. Imagine a puck held by a string on a central peg so that it travels in a circular path on a “frictionless” air table like those used in air hockey games.

Suddenly, at point P at the bottom the string breaks. Approximately which way will the puck go—path number 1, 2, 3, or 4? When I have put this question to groups of people, the answers have included 1, 2, 3, and 4, with many not being at all sure what will happen.

But we do not do science by voting. We perform an experiment. And when we actually perform the experiment, we find that the moving puck follows path 2. It does not travel outward or continue in a circle.

Newton generalized the results of many such experiments in his famous three Laws of Motion. Newton’s first law of motion can be expressed this way: An object at rest tends to stay at rest, and an object in motion tends to stay in motion with the same speed and in the same direction unless acted upon by an unbalanced force. Initially the hockey puck was constrained by the unbalanced force of the string to move in a circle. However, at the moment the string broke, it was moving in the direction of 2, and Newton’s first law says that it will continue moving in that direction; this result has been confirmed by numerous actual experiments.

Experiments, careful observations, and measurements form the basis of the scientific method, and anyone can use it, Mormon or Muslim, Baptist or Buddhist. The scientific method works in repeatable fashion, independent of one’s beliefs. Repeatability is the core strength of the scientific method.

During the Middle Ages, people would often answer questions by an appeal to authority. They would use the Latin term ipse dixit, “he himself said it,” meaning that some recognized authority—Aristotle, Ptolemy, or one of the church fathers such as Augustine or Thomas Aquinas—had said it. This appeal to authority was the end of the discussion for many. Newton, however, rejected this appeal to authority and instead advocated the use of experiments and careful observations to find out what is true, which is the basis of the modern scientific method. [3]  Aristotle maintained that the motion of the sun, moon, stars, and planets was circular. [4] However, Johannes Kepler, using the careful observations by Tycho Brahe, showed that they were in fact elliptical and derived equations that described their motion. A hundred years later, Newton showed that these elliptical orbits were the result of the gravitational force of the sun that could accurately be calculated using his famous law of gravity: Every point mass attracts every other point mass by a force pointing along the line intersecting both points. The force is directly proportional to the product of the two masses and inversely proportional to the square of the distance between the point masses—in equation form: F = G((m₁m₂)/(r²)).

We have important issues today that are of general concern for society. For example, is global warming real? Is it man-caused or the result of natural fluctuations in temperature? We can get the answer by repeated, careful experiments, observations, and measurements rather than by dogmatic or political statements.

A true scientist requires analysis based on experiments and observational evidence—it is not a matter of popular opinion or what some authority figure states. Questions important to society can be addressed by the scientific method, using experiments, then published in refereed journals. This system of review by knowledgeable peers was worked out during Newton’s lifetime by the British Royal Academy of Sciences. It is generally considered a major step in a nascent field of science when results are finally published in established peer-reviewed venues and journals. The scientific method has served us well for about 350 years.

Newton in Historical Context

The following time line places Newton in historical context with other notables.

Aristotle and Plato lived about four hundred years before Christ and their impact on Western culture has been considerable. Newton was certainly heavily influenced by Jesus Christ and the early Christian writers, for he quoted them abundantly in his writings. He took exception with some of the later Christian writers, after about AD 200. Copernicus, Tycho Brahe, Kepler, and Galileo appeared on the scene just before Newton and paved the way for his research. Newton was born on the same day in 1642 that Galileo passed away, and he used many of Galileo’s findings in developing his famous laws of motion. Isaac Newton died in 1727.

A Meshing of Science and Faith in God

Newton was both a scientist and a believer in God. He wrote Optics, a study of light. In this scientific treatise, he paused to ask: “Whence is it that Nature doth nothing in vain? And whence arises all that order and beauty which we see in the world? . . . Was the eye contrived without skill in optics? And the ear without knowledge of sounds?” [5] Then, in case the reader is not getting his point, he states plainly: “Does it not appear from phenomena that there is a Being incorporeal, living, intelligent, omnipresent, who in infinite space . . . sees the things themselves intimately, and thoroughly perceives them, and comprehends them wholly.” [6]

In his famous Principia, Newton wrote: “This Being governs all things, not as the soul of the world, but as Lord over all. . . . The Supreme God is a Being eternal, infinite, absolutely perfect . . . and from his true dominion it follows that the true God is a living, intelligent, and powerful Being. . . . He is not eternity and infinity, but eternal and infinite; he is not duration or space, but he endures and is present.” [7]

Newton also wrote, “When I wrote my treatise about our system I had an eye upon such principles as might work with considering men for the belief of a Deity; and nothing can rejoice me more than to find it useful for that purpose.” [8] In other words, Newton hoped his scientific writings would lead people to think about and believe in God.

“In human affairs the father of a family or house is frequently taken for the common father of a kindred: here the whole creation is considered as one kindred or family so named from God, the common father of all.” [9] Thus, for Newton, there was a natural meshing of science and belief in God.

In the Book of Mormon, Alma speaks of performing an individual “experiment” (he uses the same term later used by Newton) in order to learn about religious principles:

Awake and arouse your faculties, even to an experiment upon my words, and exercise a particle of faith. . . .

Now, we will compare the word unto a seed. Now, if ye give place that a seed may be planted in your heart, behold, if it be a true seed, or a good seed, if ye do not cast it out by your unbelief, that ye will resist the Spirit of the Lord, behold, it will begin to swell within your breasts; and when you feel these swelling motions, ye will begin to say within yourselves—It must needs be that this is a good seed, or that the word is good, for it beginneth to enlarge my soul; yea, it beginneth to enlighten my understanding, yea, it beginneth to be delicious to me. . . .

And now, behold, because ye have tried the experiment, and planted the seed, and it swelleth and sprouteth, and beginneth to grow, ye must needs know that the seed is good. (Alma 32: 28, 33)

Now compare this advice of Alma regarding an experiment on the word of God with this advice from Newton regarding the scriptures:

Let me therefore beg of thee not to trust to the opinion of any man concerning these things, for so it is great odds but thou shalt be deceived. Much less oughtest thou to rely upon the judgment of the multitude, for so thou shalt certainly be deceived. But search the scriptures thyself and that by frequent reading and constant meditation upon what thou readest, and earnest prayer to God to enlighten thine understanding if thou desirest to find the truth. Which if thou shalt at length attain thou wilt value above all other treasures in the world by reason of the assurance and vigour it will add to thy faith, and steady satisfaction to thy mind which he only can know how to estimate who shall experience it. [10]

It seems evident that Newton is sharing his own experience of studying the scriptures and the assurance and satisfaction the word of God brought to him, just as Alma shared his experience based on planting the word of God in his heart.

Newton’s Key to Correctly Understanding Scripture

With the foundation that Newton had obtained by reading the Bible and earnest meditation and prayer, how did he proceed to resolve other questions about religion? There were so many differing interpretations of scripture—how could one make progress in finding out the meaning intended in the Bible? Newton answers: “The first Principles of the Christian religion are founded, not on disputable conclusions, opinions, or conjectures, or on human sanctions, but on the express words of Christ and his Apostles; and we are to hold fast the form of sound words. 2 Tim. 1:13. And further, it is not enough that a proposition be true or in the express words of scripture: it must also appear to have been taught in the days of the Apostles.” [11] And again: “The first Principles of the Christian religion depend not on disputable conclusions. . . . Every truth, every sentence in scripture is not a fundamental article. It must be delivered in the express words of the first teachers, and appear to have been an article taught from the beginning.” [12] So here is Newton’s approach for understanding the Bible—read the “express words of scripture” and what was “taught in the days of the Apostles.”

At Cambridge University, where Newton studied, he had the writings of Ignatius, Irenaeus, Polycarp, and others of the earliest Christian writings, and he read their words in the original Latin and Greek. He quoted frequently from them and made a distinction between doctrines taught by those who lived during or soon after the Apostles and doctrines that appeared later in history. [13]

In 1661, Newton was admitted to Trinity College in Cambridge, England. [14] At that time, the college’s teachings were based largely on the teachings of Aristotle and other philosophers, but Newton preferred to study the experimentalists Galileo, Copernicus, and Kepler, and he came to challenge Aristotle’s teachings. [15] Shortly after he obtained his degree in April 1665, Newton left the university and for the next two years, during the pandemic known as the Great Plague, applied himself to the study of optics, gravitation, and mathematics at his mother’s home in Woolsthorpe, England. [16]

Newton returned to Cambridge in 1667 to continue his studies and obtain a Master of Arts degree, which he obtained the following year. [17] In 1669, he was named to the Lucasian Professorship of Mathematics, an elevated position at Trinity College in the Cambridge University system. [18] Already, at age twenty-six, his talents and contributions were recognized. In Newton’s day, any fellow of Cambridge or Oxford had to be an ordained priest in the Anglican Church. [19] When he accepted the position, Newton promised to take holy orders in the near future but kept postponing it for several years because his personal beliefs were in disagreement with Anglican doctrine. [20] However, the pressure to take holy orders increased, and Newton considered giving up his position rather than be ordained. [21] In March 1675 he applied to King Charles for a special dispensation, and to everyone’s surprise, within a month the king granted that the Lucasian Professor and all subsequent holders of the chair be exempt from holy orders. [22] Newton had expected a fight and had spent the preceding four years in preparation for it by immersing himself in the scriptures and other ancient texts including the earliest Christian writers. [23] He filled his notebooks with scriptural quotes, from both the Old and New Testament as well as from the earliest Christian writers. [24]

Newton on the Nature of the Godhead

Just how did Newton apply his scientific approach in his religious studies? A prime example comes from his studies of the nature of God, which he based on the scriptures combined with the teachings of the early writers of the Christian church. Newton saw two major flaws in the Christian doctrine of the Trinity: it was unsupported from the scriptures and it was illogical. [25] Newton used scriptural passages to demonstrate that the Trinitarian doctrine was incorrect, and that the scriptures instead taught that the Father, the Son, and the Holy Ghost are separate and distinct beings, three members of the Godhead. For example, the Son confessed that the Father was greater than him [26] and called him his God. [27] The Son also acknowledged the original prescience of all future things to be in the Father only. [28] Newton especially took exception to the Athanasian Creed, which was the first creed in which the equality of the three persons of the Trinity was explicitly stated. It is now generally accepted by scholars that Athanasius was not its author and that it most likely dates from the late fifth or even early sixth century AD—at least one hundred years after Athanasius. [29] The text of the Athanasian Creed follows:

Whosover will be saved, before all things it is necessary that he hold the Catholic Faith. Which Faith except everyone do keep whole and undefiled, without doubt he shall perish everlastingly. . . . The Father Uncreate, the Son Uncreate, and the Holy Ghost Uncreate. The Father Incomprehensible, the Son Incomprehensible, and the Holy Ghost Incomprehensible. The Father Eternal, the Son Eternal, and the Holy Ghost Eternal and yet they are not Three Eternals but One Eternal. As also there are not Three Uncreated, nor Three Incomprehensibles, but One Uncreated, and One Uncomprehensible. . . . So there is one Father, not three Fathers; one Son, not three Sons; one Holy Ghost, not three Holy Ghosts. And in this Trinity none is afore or after Other, None is greater or less than Another, but the whole Three Persons are Co-eternal together, and co-equal. So that in all things, as is aforesaid, the Unity in Trinity and the Trinity in Unity is to be worshipped. He therefore that will be saved, must thus think of the Trinity. [30]

For Newton this was simply not logical. He wrote, “Let them make good sense of it who are able; for my part, I can make none.” [31]

Newton Rejects 1 John 5:7

Newton wrote a long article about the passage found in 1 John 5:7 in the King James Version, which indeed sounds a bit like the Athanasian Creed: “For there are three that bear record in heaven, the Father, the Word, and the Holy Ghost; and these three are one” (1 John 5:7). Not satisfied with this passage, Newton went back and read the text of the Vulgate as well as the original Greek. He showed that the words “in heaven, the Father, the Word, and the Holy Ghost; and these three are one” did not appear in the original Greek manuscripts. He wrote that the phrase “was neither in the ancient Versions nor in the Greek but was wholly unknown to the first churches, is most certain by an argument hinted above; namely that in all that vehement, universal, and lasting controversy about the Trinity in Jerome’s time, and both before and long enough after it, this text of the Three in Heaven was never thought of. It is now in everybody’s mouth and accounted the main text for the business [of supporting the Trinitarian dogma].” [32] Newton concluded, based on early texts of the Bible, that 1 John 5:7 was a later addition. He also wrote, “That apostasy was to begin by corrupting the truth about the relation of the Son to the Father in putting them equal.” [33]

Scholars today agree that 1 John 5:7 is indeed spurious based on the same arguments that Newton used. The passage is not found in any early Greek manuscript, and it is not quoted by Greek Fathers, who, if they had known it, would certainly have used it in the Trinitarian controversies of the fourth century AD. [34]

Newton’s Views of a General Apostasy

Newton concluded a lengthy treatise on the Book of Revelation by saying: “If you now compare all with the Apocalyptic Visions, and particularly with the flight of the woman into the wilderness and the reign of the whore of Babylon, they will very much illustrate one another: for these visions are as plain as if it had been expressly said, that the true Church shall disappear, and in her stead an idolatrous church reign in the world.” [35] It is interesting to compare this with Doctrine and Covenants 86, where the Lord explains the meaning of the parable of the wheat and the tares:

Verily, thus saith the Lord unto you my servants, concerning the parable of the wheat and the tares:

Behold, verily I say, the field was the world, and the apostles were the sowers of the seed; And after they have fallen asleep the great persecutor of the church, the apostate, the whore, even Babylon, that maketh all nations to drink of her cup, in whose hearts the enemy, even Satan, sitteth to reign—behold he soweth the tares; wherefore, the tares choke the wheat and drive the church into the wilderness. (D&C 86:1–3)

Newton insisted that this was a “general Apostacy,” [36] and used such scriptures as 1 Timothy 1 and 2 [37] and in particular 2 Thessalonians 2:3, which Newton translates as: “The day of the Lord shall not come except the Apostacy come first & that man of sin be revealed the Son of perdition.” [38] These, of course, are scriptures the Latter-day Saints also use to support the idea of a general apostasy.

Newton also remarked:

Now though the unity of the Church depended upon the unity of the faith and therefore the rule of faith was unalterable, yet before the end of the second century some of the Latin churches in opposition to heretics began to add new articles to it. And after they had, by adding some articles in the language of the scriptures, made precedents for creating to themselves a creed-making authority: they began to add articles in other language than that of the scripture till they lost the primitive Apostolic rule of faith, and by the loss of it brought all into confusion. [39]

On his deathbed, Newton openly disclosed his rejection of apostate Christianity by refusing to accept the last rites of the Anglican Church. [40]

Newton Predicts a Restoration of the True Gospel

Newton’s study of the scriptures brought him to the conclusion that just as there had been a falling away, there would also be a restoration of the true church of Jesus Christ. He quoted Malachi 3 and other scriptures in his commentary that are standard scriptural passages used by Latter-day Saints in discussing the restoration:

Behold I will send my messenger & he shall prepare the way before me & the Lord whom ye seek shall suddenly come to his temple—But who may abide the day of his coming? & who shall stand when he appeareth. Malachi 3.1, 2. [41]

And there appeared unto them Moses & Elias & they were talking with Jesus—And (the disciples) asked him saying why say the Scribes that Elias must first come And he answered & told them Elias verily cometh first & restoreth all things. . . . Mark 9.4, 11[–]13. . . . Jesus said unto them (his disciples) Elias shall first come & restore all things. . . . Matth 17.11. [42]

Whom the heaven must receive until the times of restitution of all things which God hath spoken by the mouth of all his holy prophets since the world began. Acts 3.21. [43]

I will lay the Land most desolate & the pomp of her strength shall cease, & the Mountains (i.e. Cities) of Israel shall be desolate. Ezek 33.28. [44]

Jerusalem shall become heaps, & the Mountain of the house as the high-places of the Forest: But in the last days it shall come to pass that the Mountain of the house of the Lord shall be established in the top of the Mountains & it shall be exalted above the hills &c i.e. above all other temples. Mica 3.12. [45]

So in Dan 2 The new Jerusalem extending its dominion over the earth is represented by a great mountain which filled the whole Earth. [46]

Newton found multiple examples throughout history of reformations by God:

The worship which is due to this God we are to give to no other nor to ascribe anything absurd or contradictious to his nature or actions lest we be found to blaspheme him or to deny him or to make a step towards atheism or irreligion. . . . For as often as mankind has swerved from them, God has made a reformation. When the sons of Adam erred and the thoughts of their heart became evil continually, God selected Noah to people a new world. And when the posterity of Noah transgressed and began to invoke dead men, God selected Abraham and his posterity. And when they transgressed in Egypt God reformed them by Moses. And when they relapsed to idolatry and immorality, God sent Prophets to reform them and punished them by the Babylonian captivity. And when they that returned from captivity, mixed human inventions with the law of Moses under the name of traditions, and laid the stress of religion not upon the acts of the mind, but upon outward acts and ceremonies, God sent Christ to reform them. And when the nation received him not, God called the Gentiles. And now the Gentiles have corrupted themselves, we may expect that God in due time will make a new reformation. And in all the reformations of religion hitherto made, the religion in respect of God and our neighbor is one and the same religion . . . so that this is the oldest religion in the world.[47]

Newton argued that it was the same religion that was restored from time to time by God because men deviated from this true religion. He concluded: “So then the mystery of this restitution of all things is to be found in all the Prophets: which makes me wonder with great admiration that so few Christians of our age can find it there.” [48]

Conclusion

Newton died on March 20, 1727, and was buried in Westminster Abby on April 4. His coffin was carried by “the Lord High Chancellor, the Dukes of Montrose and Roxborough, and the Earls of Pembroke, Sussex and Macclesfield.” [49] Other great scientists buried near him include James Clerk Maxwell and Michael Faraday.

Isaac Newton was one of the world’s greatest scientists. He utilized his great genius and powers of reasoning to produce his famous scientific discoveries including his laws of motion, the law of universal gravitation, studies in optics, and the invention of calculus. But he was also a devout Christian, and he brought this same intellectual genius to bear in his analysis of Christianity, and he based his beliefs on his own studies of the Bible along with the earliest Christian writers. Based on his studies he rejected the doctrine of the Trinity and proved that it was unbiblical. He also concluded from that there had been an apostasy from the true Church of Christ, and that at some future time there would be a restoration.”

Notes

The author acknowledges Professor Michael D. Rhodes for a careful reading of this paper and numerous useful suggestions.

[1] Michael White, Isaac Newton: The Last Sorcerer (Reading, MA: Addison-Wesley, 1997), 360.
[2] White, Isaac Newton, 346.
[3] Isaac Newton, The Mathematical Principles of Natural Philosophy, trans. Andrew Motte (Berkley University of California Press, 1946), Rule 4 in Book III, 400.
[4] Aristotle, On the Heavens, 1.9.
[5] Isaac Newton, Opticks, 4th ed. (London: William Innys, 1730), 344; spelling and punctuation modernized.
[6] Isaac Newton, Opticks, 345; spelling and punctuation modernized.
[7] Isaac Newton, Principia, ed. Stephen Hawking (Philadelphia: Running Press, 2002), 426–27.
[8] Isaac Newton, Original letter from Isaac Newton to Richard Bentley, 189.R.4.47, ff. 4A-5, Trinity College Library, Cambridge, UK; found on the Newton Project website: http://www.newtonproject.sussex.ac.uk/view/texts/normalized/
THEM00254; spelling and punctuation modernized.
[9] Isaac Newton, Two Notable Corruptions of Scripture (part 4: ff. 70–83), ms. 361(4), f. 94, New College Library, Oxford, http://www.newtonproject.sussex.ac.uk/view/texts/normalized/THEM00263; spelling and punctuation modernized.
[10] Isaac Newton, Untitled Treatise on Revelation (section 1.1), Yahuda Ms. 1.1, 1r–2r. Jewish National and University Library, Jerusalem, http://www.newtonproject.sussex.ac.uk/view/texts/normalized/THEM00135; spelling and punctuation modernized.
[11] Isaac Newton, Irenicum, Keynes Ms. 3, King’s College, Cambridge, 13, http://www.newtonproject.sussex.ac.uk/view/texts/normalized/THEM00003; spelling and punctuation modernized, emphasis added.
[12] Newton, Irenicum, 25; spelling and punctuation modernized, emphasis added.
[13] For example, see Isaac Newton, Drafts on the History of the Church (Section 6), Yahuda Ms. 15.6, National Library of Israel, Jerusalem, http://www.newtonproject.sussex.ac.uk/view/texts/normalized/THEM00223; Isaac Newton, Paradoxical Questions concerning the morals & actions of Athanasius & his followers, William Andrews Clark Memorial Library, Los Angeles, 
http://www.newtonproject.sussex.ac.uk/view/texts/normalized/THEM00117.
[14] White, Isaac Newton, 46, 55.
[15] White, Isaac Newton, 53.
[16] White, Isaac Newton, 58.
[17] White, Isaac Newton, 94–95.
[18] White, Isaac Newton, 103.
[19] White, Isaac Newton, 150.
[20] White, Isaac Newton, 150.
[21] White, Isaac Newton, 150.
[22] White, Isaac Newton, 151.
[23] White, Isaac Newton, 151–52.
[24] See footnotes 8–10.
[25] White, Isaac Newton, 152.
[26] Drafts on the history of the Church (Section 3), Yahuda Ms. 15.3, 47v., National Library of Israel,
Jerusalem, http://www.newtonproject.sussex.ac.uk/view/texts/normalized/THEM00220.
[27] Isaac Newton, Drafts on the history of the Church (Section 7), Yahuda Ms. 15.7, 154r, National Library of Israel, Jerusalem, http://www.newtonproject.sussex.ac.uk/view/texts/normalized/THEM00237.
[28] Isaac Newton, Drafts on the history of the Church (Section 3), Yahuda Ms. 15.3, 66r.
[29] Frederick W. Norris, “Athanasian Creed,” in Encyclopedia of Early Christianity, 2nd ed., ed. Everett Fergusen (New York: Garland, 1997); Michael O’Carroll, “Athanasian Creed,” in Trinitas (Wilmington, DE: Michael Glazier, 1987); Concordia Triglotta (St. Louis: Concordia Publishing House, 1921), 13.
[30] Charles G. Herbermann and others, eds., The Catholic Encyclopedia (New York: The Universal Knowledge Foundation, 1907), s.v. Athanasian Creed.
[31] Isaac Newton, Two Notable Corruptions of the Scriptures (part 1: ff. 1–41), ms. 361(4).
[32] Isaac Newton, Two Notable Corruptions of Scripture (part 1: ff. 1–41), ms 361(4), f. 7.
[33] Isaac Newton, Untitled Treatise on Revelation (section 1.4), Yahuda Ms. 1.4, 158r, Jewish National and University Library, Jerusalem, http://www.newtonproject.sussex.ac.uk/view/texts/normalized/THEM00182; spelling modernized.
[34] Bruce M. Metzger, A Textual Commentary on the Greek New Testament, 2nd ed. (Stuttgart: German Bible Society, 1994), 647–49.
[35] Isaac Newton, Untitled Treatise on Revelation (section 1.2), Yahuda Ms. 1.2, 27v, National Library of Israel, Jerusalem, http://www.newtonproject.sussex.ac.uk/view/texts/normalized/THEM00137; spelling and punctuation modernized.
[36] Isaac Newton, Untitled Treatise on Revelation (section 1.2), Yahuda Ms. 1.2, 24r.
[37] Isaac Newton, Untitled Treatise on Revelation (section 1.2), Yahuda Ms. 1.2, 24r.
[38] Isaac Newton, Untitled Treatise on Revelation (section 1.2), Yahuda Ms. 1.2, 24v.
[39] Isaac Newton, Drafts on the history of the Church (Section 5), Yahuda Ms. 15.5, 92v, Jewish National and University Library, Jerusalem, http://www.newtonproject.sussex.ac.uk/view/texts/normalized/THEM00222; spelling and punctuation modernized.
[40] White, Isaac Newton, 360
[41] Isaac Newton, Prophesies concerning Christs 2d coming,ASC Ms. N47 HER, James White Library, Andrews University, Berrien Springs, Michigan, USA, 8, http://www.newtonproject.sussex.ac.uk/view/texts/normalized/THEM00088; spelling modernized
[42] Isaac Newton, Prophesies concerning Christs 2d coming, ASC Ms. N47 HER; spelling modernized.
[43] Isaac Newton, Prophesies concerning Christs 2d coming, ASC Ms. N47 HER; spelling modernized.
[44] Isaac Newton, Untitled Treatise on Revelation (section 1.1a), Yahuda Ms. 1.1a, 3v, Jewish National and University Library, Jerusalem, http://www.newtonproject.sussex.ac.uk/view/texts/normalized/THEM00136.
[45] Isaac Newton, Untitled Treatise on Revelation (section 1.1a), Yahuda Ms. 1.1a, 4r; spelling modernized.
[46] Isaac Newton, Untitled Treatise on Revelation (section 1.1a), Yahuda Ms. 1.1a, 3r; spelling  modernized.
[47] Isaac Newton, Irenicum, 35; spelling and punctuation modernized.
[48] Yahuda MS 6, folio 12, cited in Frank E. Manuel, The Religion of Isaac Newton (Oxford: Clarendon, 1974), 126.[49] White, Isaac Newton, 360.

Source: https://rsc.byu.edu/archived/converging-paths-truth/brief-survey-sir-isaac-newtons-views-religion

Isaac Newton’s Inclusive Monotheism

“So Newton appeared to believe that there were intermediary divine beings in the universe between us and the “Supreme being,” or something like that. We have to keep in mind what a radical cosmic shift it was to go from the Ptolemaic system to the Copernican and Newtonian ones: the universe became massively larger. In radical monotheism there could only be one God, so He was simply moved to the top of this much larger universe, even though this universe was not described anywhere in the Bible. Andrew Michael Ramsay reported, “We must accept the opinion of Sir Isaac Newton and other theologians, that several books on the creation by pre-Mosaic Patriarchs have been lost, and that Genesis is only a very brief summary of these.”[5] With this new universe, Newton seemed to feel that information was missing from the Bible.

Joseph Smith, not worried about adhering to orthodoxy and radical monotheism, said similar things.[6]“

[5] Quoted in D. P. Walker, The Ancient Theology: Studies in Christian Platonism from the Fifteenth to the Eighteenth Century (Ithaca: Cornell University Press, 1972), 243. Newton’s Chronology of Ancient Kingdom’s Amended, (1728) sought to understand the religion of Noah “partly maintained by the Jews, but debased elsewhere into paganism.” Paul Kleber Monod, Solomon’s Secret Arts: The Occult in the Age of Enlightenment (New Haven: Yale University Press, 2013), 165.

[6] Newton had a number of other ideas similar to Smith’s including their views on the Trinity. See Thomas C. Pfizenmaier, The Trinitarian Theology of Dr. Samuel Clarke (1675-1729): Context, Sources, and Controversy (Leiden: Brill, 1997).

Sir Isaac Newton Interprets Daniel’s Prophecies

by John P. Pratt Reprinted from Meridian Magazine (11 Aug 2004)

Sir Isaac Newton, the author of classical physics and a devout Christian, interpreted the Book of Daniel, providing insights which are still profound today.

Sir Isaac Newton, upon whose work nearly all of classical physics is built, was a deeply religious Christian, who saw the hand of God in all things. To him, all of the great laws of physics which he discovered, were the laws of God that testify of his design. He would have been appalled to know that centuries later, atheists would be claiming that he had really discovered self-existent laws, which explain the universe so well that God is no longer needed in the equation.

Newton wrote an entire book interpreting the prophecies of the Biblical books of Daniel and the Revelation of John (also called “The Apocalypse”). His insights vary in several respects from the “standard” modern Christian interpretations, and his perspicacity might well be vindicated as the rest of these prophecies are yet fulfilled. Besides his immense intellect, he provides a huge contribution which few can supply even today. He had a wealth of knowledge of ancient history, obtained by reading mountains of documents in the original Greek, Latin and Hebrew, in which he saw many of those prophecies literally fulfilled long after they had been revealed. To him, it was a proof of the foreknowledge of God, which was his purpose in writing the book.

His work, Observations on the Prophecies of Daniel and the Apocalypse of St. John, published in 1733 (six years after his death and the year after George Washington’s birth), has recently been reprinted.^[1] This article is essentially a review of that book, focusing especially on the new contributions he made to the study of the first two visions of Daniel, in identifying exactly what kingdoms of the world are indicated.

https://www.johnpratt.com/items/docs/lds/meridian/2004/newton.html#fn8

Notice on the map (above) how neatly the Rhine and Danube Rivers divide the continent of Europe into two pieces. These rivers today still form large parts of the borders between countries. As stated above, the Roman Empire only extended to the Danube. The ten nations which Newton identified are the ten with names in underlined italics on the map in Figure 2. All ten are south of the Danube and west of Greece, in the area of the Western Roman Empire.

The exact date of the Fall of Rome may be important for understanding this vision, especially because three of the nations were said to have been subsequently uprooted. The nations really seemed to play “musical chairs” during the centuries after Rome fell. That is, they not only did not combine into one big empire, they also did not stay in one place. They each grabbed up what they could of the empire, and then had wars to try to hold onto what they had. So the map in Figure 2 is only a “snapshot” of the empire in AD 425 when nations were still on the move.

Newton’s Contributions

Without going through a detailed analysis of all that Newton said, let me summarize what appear to be his main contributions to the subject.

• The five visions of Daniel and the Book of Revelation are to be read as one coherent set using the same imagery.
• Each vision adds more details to the earlier, so that the final picture can be pieced together like a jigsaw puzzle.
• Each horn is an entire kingdom, as well as at least one principal king, such as Nebuchadnezzar of Babylon or Alexander of Greece.
• Each of the four beasts represents non-overlapping countries which endure until the Ancient of Days comes in judgment.
• Divine imagery uses fixed rules, so any true understanding must involve a self-consistent interpretation derived from a set of precepts. He derived the laws of physics believing God follows set laws, and he assumes the revelations from God also follow set laws.
• Some of the revelations may find a dual fulfillment in both the first and second coming of Jesus Christ.
• The three and a half times of the little horn of the fourth beast are to be reckoned as 1,260 years, rather than three and a half years (1,260 days), the more common modern interpretation.

There is one more huge point which Newton contributed which to me is worth an entire article on its own. It is his understanding of the most precise prophecy of the timing of the first coming of the Messiah. Next month’s article will show how Newton provided the key to understanding Daniel’s prophecy of the seventy weeks (Dan. 9:24-27) in a manner so precise that it should silence all critics. Source: and complete article.

In the midst of all this government turmoil and pandemic, our mission as members of The Church of Jesus Christ of Latter-day Saints has not changed. We must serve the Lord our God with all our heart. Christ’s mission hasn’t changed which says, “For behold, this is my work and my glory—to bring to pass the immortality and eternal life of man.” Moses 1:39

We make a covenant with the Lord to obey His commandments and in return we receive Freedom, Protection, a Posterity, and a blessed country called the United States of America. The Book of Mormon Covenant Land is the United States of America Read Rod Meldrum’s The Scriptural Basis for Book of Mormon Geography

Book of Mormon Prophets and Covenants

The Lord covenanted with Enos to bring forth the Book of Mormon to the Lamanites. “And I, Enos, knew it would be according to the covenant which he had made; wherefore my soul did rest.” (Enos 1:17).

“…King Benjamin thought it was expedient, after having finished speaking to the people, that he should take the names of all those who had entered into a covenant with God to keep his commandments. Mosiah 6:1

Captain Moroni said …”whosoever will maintain this title [Title of Liberty] upon the land, let them come forth in the strength of the Lord, and enter into a covenant that they will maintain their rights, and their religion, that the Lord God may bless them.” Alma 46:20

Nephi said… ”we have obtained a land of promise, a land which is choice above all other lands; a land which the Lord God hath covenanted with me should be a land for the inheritance of my seed. Yea, the Lord hath covenanted this land unto me, and to my children forever, and also all those who should be led out of other countries by the hand of the Lord. 2 Nephi 1:5

The Lord has said …”repent and remember the new covenant, even the Book of Mormon…” D&C 84:57
“…I, the Lord, will make known unto you what I will that ye shall do from this time until the next conference, which shall be held in Missouri, upon the land which I will consecrate unto my people, which are a remnant of Jacob, and those who are heirs according to the covenant.” D&C 52:2

“And this shall be my covenant with you, ye shall have it for the land of your inheritance, and for the inheritance of your children forever, while the earth shall stand, and ye shall possess it again in eternity, no more to pass away.” D&C 38:20

Mosiah 12:32 “And now since the coming of Ammon, king Limhi had also entered into a covenant with God, and also many of his people, to serve him and keep his commandments.”

Even the Puritans who came from Holland to England and then to America made covenants with God. The Book of Mormon speaks of the Pilgrims and Puritans who landed in 1620 at Plymouth, MA.

“17 And I beheld that their mother Gentiles were gathered together upon the waters, and upon the land also, to battle against them.
18 And I beheld that the power of God was with them, and also that the wrath of God was upon all those that were gathered together against them to battle.
19 And I, Nephi, beheld that the Gentiles that had gone out of captivity were delivered by the power of God out of the hands of all other nations.” 1 Nephi 13:17-19

The Pilgrims’ Mayflower Compact as a Covenant

“When the Pilgrims came to America, they landed in unchartered territory, in present-day Massachusetts.  Realizing they were outside England’s chartered bounds, some non-Pilgrims or “strangers” on board the Mayflower talked of leaving the group and venturing out on their own.  But the Pilgrims had selected every man on the trip according to his particular skills.  They depended on one another for survival.  So, while aboard the Mayflower vessel, they made an unprecedented decision to draft and sign their own charter.  The “Mayflower Compact,” as it became known, was a written agreement or covenant among themselves under God to stick together, create a civil body, and enact just laws in their new colony of Plymouth.  The contract was signed on November 11, 1620, by all heads of households, Pilgrims and non-Pilgrims alike.

With their Mayflower Compact, the Pilgrims applied the principle of covenants to found their new colony of Plymouth in America.  A covenant is a voluntary, moral agreement or pact between two or more free and consenting parties, usually for a religious or civil purpose.  The Pilgrims derived this idea from the Bible—which tells the story of the ancient Israelites in the Old Testament and the early Christians in the New Testament.  Covenants are the means by which God often relates with humans and how humans may effectively relate with one another.  They are found in the Bible, for example, in Genesis, Exodus, Matthew, and Hebrews.

Moses Descends from Mount Sinai with the Ten Commandments by Ferdinand Bol, 1662 In the Old Testament, for example, God covenants with Moses and the Israelites.  The Israelites receive from God at Mount Sinai the terms of this covenant to be God’s people.  These terms—the Ten Commandments—are found in Exodus 20 and 34.

The Pilgrims had, for a long time, practiced covenants in their churches, and they applied this principle when creating their first civil covenant, the Mayflower Compact, in America.”  American Heritage Education

Mayflower Compact

In the name of God, Amen. We, whose names are underwritten, the Loyal Subjects of our dread Sovereign Lord King James, by the Grace of God, of Great Britain, France, and Ireland, King, defender of the Faith, etc.:

Having undertaken, for the Glory of God, and advancements of the Christian faith, and the honor of our King and Country, a voyage to plant the first colony in the Northern parts of Virginia; do by these presents, solemnly and mutually, in the presence of God, and one another; covenant and combine ourselves together into a civil body politic; for our better ordering, and preservation and furtherance of the ends aforesaid; and by virtue hereof to enact, constitute, and frame, such just and equal laws, ordinances, acts, constitutions, and offices, from time to time, as shall be thought most meet and convenient for the general good of the colony; unto which we promise all due submission and obedience.

In witness whereof we have hereunto subscribed our names at Cape Cod the 11th of November, in the year of the reign of our Sovereign Lord King James, of England, France, and Ireland, the eighteenth, and of Scotland the fifty-fourth, 1620.

The Fog That Saved An Army

John Witherspoon’s The Dominion of Providence Over the Passions of Men caused a great stir when it was first preached in Princeton and published in Philadelphia in 1776, about a month before he was elected to the Continental Congress on June 22. He reminds his auditors that the sermon is his first address on political matters from the pulpit: ministers of the Gospel have more important business to attend to than secular crises, but, of course, liberty is more than a merely secular matter.

“Incredibly, yet again, circumstances – fate, luck, Providence, the hand of God, as would be said so often – intervened.” –  Historian David McCullough from his book 1776.

Most Americans are not aware of how precarious the situation was at times for the American Continental Army during the Revolutionary War.  I wrote about one such time during the Battle of Trenton December 1776: The Month That Saved America.  Four months before the Battle of Trenton, the Continental and British armies met in the Battle of Brooklyn, or what is also called the Battle of Long Island or the Battle of Brooklyn Heights, in one of the largest battles of the Revolutionary War.  The fate of the American Revolution and the future of our planet were forever changed by what transpired.

After the British abandoned Boston in March 1776, their next campaign was in New York. Their plan was to isolate New York and New England from the rest of the colonies.  A large British force of approximately 32,000 soldiers opposed about 19,000 soldiers of the Continental Army. After the British force landed on Stanton Island, General George Washington moved much of his army across the East River from Lower Manhattan to defend Brooklyn.

A map of the battle

On August 27, 1776, the British attacked Brooklyn on three fronts.  The British attacked American forces directly on two fronts, but sent a force of about 10,000 men through a little used pass and outflanked the Americans.  Caught off guard and outnumbered, only a series of fortuitous events saved the American Revolution.

First, a small group of 400 soldiers from Maryland were able to fight and save the army from a complete rout.  This allowed a larger group of Americans to retreat to Brooklyn Heights and avoid capture.  Rather than press their advantage, British General William Howe ordered his men to stop the attack and instead dig trenches around the Continental Army.  He expected the Americans to surrender.  He also expected British ships to sail around and cut off the Americans from their only line of retreat across the river to Manhattan.  But the ships never came.  Why?  Because there was not enough wind to get them there.

Washington had the night to secretly get 9,000 men to safety and keep his army intact.  He ordered every available boat to be taken and used to get his army across the East River. Working throughout the rainy night, the oarsmen in the boats crossed the river multiple times to deliver soldiers across to the other side.  The only problem was that as the sun rose, there was still a large part of the Continental Army left in Brooklyn.  These men likely would have been killed or captured if they did not cross the river, losses the Americans could not afford.

But the final fortune would smile down on the Americans from Above. A heavy fog settled over the area and the rest of the Continental Army was able to conceal their movements from the British.  As the fog lifted, the British were left in amazement as the Continental Army was gone.

The British went on to capture New York on September 15, 1776, but they did so without destroying the Continental Army.  The Revolutionary War would continue and with it ultimate American victory.  Without a few hundred soldiers, a lack of wind and some heavy fog, there may have never been a United States of America. Source

Three times weird weather saved America The Washington Post

Three times weird weather saved America

On the first day of spring, a look back at a heavy fog, a propitious hurricane and a sound-sucking heat that changed the course of the American Revolution , the War of 1812 and the Battle of Gettysburg.

But sometimes, weird weather can be a boon, particularly when it comes to the existence of one United States of America. Here are three times when the movements of the heavens helped Americans here on earth.This isn’t really what the secret evacuation of Brooklyn on Aug. 30, 1776, looked like, because that torch would have been seen by British troops and foiled the plot. (Library of Congress/Library of Congress) The fog of (Revolutionary) war.

On the face of it, it may not look like America was “saved” during the Battle of Long Island; Gen. George Washington and the Continental Army he commanded lost badly. They were outnumbered by the British 2 to 1. One-fifth of Washington’s force had been lost to death, injury or capture. And on the evening of Aug. 29, 1776, they were pinned down in Brooklyn between the East River and the British army.

Though rain had ruined Washington’s earliest military pursuits, on this night, Mother Nature did him a solid — in the form of liquid and gas. First, rain slowed down the British advance. That gave Washington time to plot an escape. As the sun went down, Washington gathered every boat available to the shore and began to — very quietly — evacuate his men across the shore. As Ron Chernow describes in “Washington: A Life,” cloth was wrapped around oars to mute their sound, and winds miraculously shifted so sailboats could silently glide across the river. Washington ordered campfires to stay lit all night to trick British guards into thinking they hadn’t moved.

[The plot to assassinate George Washington — and how it was foiled] But they still weren’t fast enough to beat the sun, which, in these pre-daylight-saving years, rose at about 5:20 a.m. Dozens of men were still waiting to leave, including Washington, when a glorious fog rolled in. It was so thick, one soldier reported, that you couldn’t see more than 20 feet away. That was all the Americans needed to evacuate the rest of their troops. Washington was the last one to board a boat to safety, and he and his army were free to fight another day.

“Say, do you smell rain?” (Library of Congress/Library of Congress) The singeing of Washington Frequently, when an invading army captures a city, they occupy it. (For example, when Washington’s troops evacuated New York, the British occupied it for seven years.) But not so when the British invaded Washington during the War of 1812.

Why? The weather, probably. Sure, when the British invaded on Aug, 24, 1814, they set the Capitol building on fire — which at the time housed not only Congress, but the Supreme Court and the Library of Congress. Then they set the White House alight, famously sending first lady Dolley Madison running (though not with a painting in hand, as you may have heard).

[Canada didn’t burn the White House. And Dolley Madison needs a fact check, too.] The next morning, with the previous day’s fires still smoldering, British troops continued their arson. And that’s when a severe thunderstorm, possibly a hurricane, came barreling in. A pounding rain put all the fires out. Wind sent debris flying, killing several British soldiers. Then a tornado touched down in the middle of Constitution Avenue, sending cannons into the air, which landed right on top of them.

Terrified British troops regrouped on Capitol Hill and decided to bail. The wind and rain continued, and as they headed for their damaged ships to sail away, a British admiral exclaimed to a resident: “Great God, Madam! Is this the kind of storm to which you are accustomed in this infernal country?”

Some historians say the British never intended to occupy the city, only to raze it; others disagree. In any case, they were in and out in 26 hours, and the incident soon became known as “the storm that saved Washington.”Two children play by a cannon on Little Round Top Hill on Nov. 18, 2013. (Michel du Cille/The Washington Post) Longstreet’s silent charge

Heading into the Battle of Gettysburg in July 1863, Confederate Gen. Robert E. Lee was aiming for a decisive win, one so big it would drive the Union to seek peace terms. Among Lost Cause apologists, Lt. Gen. James Longstreet is the villain whose dawdling foiled that plan.

But, according to one theory, a bizarre phenomenon known as an “acoustic shadow” may have played a bigger role in the defeat.As the summer heat bore down on the second day of fighting, Lee ordered Longstreet to attack Union troops at Cemetery Hill and take the virtually empty Little Round Top. Lt. Gen. Richard S. Ewell’s men were to make a show of force opposite them to split the Union troops and draw them away from the hill. Ewell was to begin his action at the sound of Longstreet’s artillery barrage.

Yes, Longstreet did take a long time to gather his men before attacking in the late afternoon. But, according to physicist and military expert Charles D. Ross, “for a long time after Longstreet had begun his attack, Ewell heard nothing and hence did not move his troops.” When the fighting that day was over, Longstreet’s men were narrowly defeated, and the Union had yet another high tactical advantage.

[Her image had been buried near a Civil War battlefield for 100 years. Then I found her.] So why didn’t Ewell hear Longstreet’s barrage? According to Ross, Ewell was likely in the middle of an acoustic shadow, an atmospheric phenomenon caused by a combination of geography, heat and wind by which sound is “stopped” from traveling in one direction, even while it travels perfectly well in others.

The hillsides of Gettysburg are just the sort of place where acoustic shadows can develop. “More importantly, the hot temperatures near the ground probably caused a dramatic upward refraction of sound waves,” wrote Ross.The next day, when Maj. Gen. George Pickett went on his doomed charge, his men were cut down by Union troops positioned perfectly on Little Round Top, the very place Longstreet had barely lost. From then on, the Union had the upper hand in the Civil War.

Because of this and other acoustic shadows during the war, Ross wrote, “One might even go so far as to say the acoustical shadows determined the course of the entire war.”Read more RetropolisThe truth about Confederate Gen. Robert E. Lee: He wasn’t very good at his job.

The worst Fourth of July George Washington ever had — and how it led to a new nation The rise, set and rise of daylight saving time.

1776: Witherspoon, Dominion of Providence over the Passions of Men (Sermon)

“Religion began to revive, nothing contributed more to facilitate its reception and increase its progress than the violence of its persecutors.”

In all after ages, in conformity to this, the deepest laid contrivances of the prince of darkness, have turned out to the confusion of their author; and I know not, but considering his malice and pride, this perpetual disappointment, and the superiority of divine wisdom, may be one great source of his suffering and torment. The cross hath still been the banner of truth, under which it hath been carried through the world. Persecution has been but as the furnace to the gold, to purge it of its dross, to manifest its purity, and increase its lustre. It was taken notice of very early, that the blood of the martyrs was the seed of christianity; the more abundantly it was shed, the more plentifully did the harvest grow.

So certain has this appeared, that the most violent infidels, both of early and later ages, have endeavored to account for it, and have observed that there is a spirit of obstinacy in man which inclines him to resist violence, and that severity doth but increase opposition, be the cause what it will. They suppose that persecution is equally proper to propagate truth and error. This though in part true, will by no means generally hold. Such an apprehension, however, gave occasion to a glorious triumph of divine providence of an opposite kind, which I must shortly relate to you. One of the Roman emperors, Julian, surnamed the apostate, perceiving how impossible it was to suppress the gospel by violence, endeavored to extinguish it by neglect and scorn. He left the Christians unmolested for sometime, but gave all manner of encouragement to those of opposite principles, and particularly to the Jews, out of hatred to the Christians; and that he might bring public disgrace upon the Galileans, as he affected to stile them, he encouraged the Jews to rebuild the temple of Jerusalem, and visibly refute the prophecy of Christ, that it should lie under perpetual desolation. But this profane attempt was so signally frustrated, that it served, as much as any one circumstance, to spread the glory of our Redeemer, and establish the faith of his saints. It is affirmed by some ancient authors, particularly by Ammianus Marcellinus, a heathen historian, that fire came out of the earth and consumed the workmen when laying the foundation. But in whatever way it was prevented, it is beyond all controversy, from the concurring testimony of heathens and Christians, that little or no progress was ever made in it, and that in a short time, it was entirely defeated.

It is proper here to observe, that at the time of the reformation, when religion began to revive, nothing contributed more to facilitate its reception and increase its progress than the violence of its persecutors. Their cruelty and the patience of the sufferers, naturally disposed men to examine and weigh the cause to which they adhered with so much constancy and resolution. At the same time also, when they were persecuted in one city, they fled to another, and carried the discoveries of popish fraud to every part of the world. It was by some of those who were persecuted in Germany, that the light of the reformation was brought so early into Britain.

The power of divine providence appears with the most distinguished lustre, when small and inconsiderable circumstances, and sometimes, the weather and seasons, have defeated the most formidable armaments, and frustrated the best concerted expeditions. Near two hundred years ago, the monarchy of Spain was in the height of its power and glory, and determined to crush the interest of the reformation. They sent out a powerful armament against Britain, giving it ostentatiously, and in my opinion profanely, the name of the Invincible Armada. But it pleased God so entirely to discomfit it by tempests, that a small part of it returned home, though no British force had been opposed to it at all.

We have a remarkable instance of the influence of small circumstances in providence in the English history. The two most remarkable persons in the civil wars, had earnestly desired to withdraw themselves from the contentions of the times, Mr. Hampden and Oliver Cromwell. They had actually taken their passage in a ship for New England, when by an arbitrary order of council they were compelled to remain at home. The consequence of this was, that one of them was the soul of the republican opposition to monarchical usurpation during the civil wars, and the other in the course of that contest, was the great instrument in bringing the tyrant to the block.

The only other historical remark I am to make, is, that the violent persecution which many eminent Christians met with in England from their brethren, who called themselves Protestants, drove them in great numbers to a distant part of the world, where the light of the gospel and true religion were unknown. Some of the American settlements, particularly those in New-England, were chiefly made by them; and as they carried the knowledge of Christ to the dark places of the earth, so they continue themselves in as great a degree of purity, of faith, and strictness of practice, or rather a greater, than is to be found in any protestant church now in the world. Does not the wrath of man in this instance praise God? Was not the accuser of the brethren, who stirs up their enemies, thus taken in his own craftiness, and his kingdom shaken by the very means which he employed to establish it.* https://oll.libertyfund.org/page/1776-witherspoon-dominion-of-providence-over-the-passions-of-men-sermon

Very Important

For those of you who usually endure to the end of some of my long blogs, I want to ask you a few things to ponder about.

Why did I choose the title Covenants and Miracles as the title of this blog? Consider what I have spoken about the past few blogs and you will know.

Miracles happen of course whenever the Lord wants. They can happen to the old and the young, the bond and the free, the black and white, and for anyone else and at any time.

A covenant made with God is a spiritually binding agreement between whoever makes the Covenant and the Lord. If I make a Covenant with God it doesn’t give me a greater chance of having or seeing a miracle does it? Just being a child of God gives me a possibility of a miracle. Birth itself is a miracle, correct?

Should we seek for miracles? Do we need miracles to make us happy? Did Laman and Lemuel see miracles? Did it improve their lives? You see if we seek for miracles, we are wrong. If we pray for miracles in times of need they may or may not happen. Either way we thank the Lord and pray we learn from our challenge.

Hopefully…
We have make a Covenant with God at Baptism
We made a Covenant with God by Endowment
We made a Covenant with God during our Sealing

Did we make a covenant with our Country?
These questions I ask are not meant to be answered by me, but by yourselves.

I just want you to THINK!

What is happening in the Covenant Nation of the United States? Is Satan winning today? What are we doing to prevent an evil overthrow?

Did you know worshippers of Baal are alive and thriving today? You don’t see the evilest but it is all around us. We must keep our Covenants and not expect a miracle. Why dont each of us become the miracle or create our own miracle?

We didn’t need a miracle to receive these covenants, but we may have had a few miracles along the way as a blessing. Covenants and miracles can come together or not at all.

Less than 20% of our Founding Fathers fought for our freedom and yet 100% of the people were blessed with freedom, that is a Miracle with no covenant. How blessed may we be when we make a Covenant with God and never expect a miracle? A miracle or two may still come but it is not necessary for miracles, but it is necessary to make Covenant with God.

May the United States Constitution be restored to its original glory. May the evil find punishment and the righteous prevail. May we keep our Covenants with God and praise Him when we get our Constitution back. I don’t believe the Lord will come for a 2nd time until we wise up to keeping our covenants in a newly restored world wide constitution of hope.

May we then give thanks to God and spend the rest of our lives in sharing the miracle of the Book of Mormon with the world, and especially with the newly liberated world after our Constitution is restored.

Keep Praying, God is with us all.

If you read this complete blog, thank you. Please email me privately with your comments at [email protected]. I just may share something with you. I love you and I pray for our Constitution and for all citizens of the world.

“We believe in absolute truth, including the existence of God and the right and wrong established by His commandments… We also know that evil exists and that some things are simply, seriously, and everlastingly wrong.” Dallin H. Oaks

Now is the time to search and find truth. Information is coming from all directions. Satan is working overtime to deceive us and his minions are spreading lies everywhere. We shouldn’t tolerate a wrong decision or behavior. Support our Constitution of Truth and don’t tolerate the evil spoken of about our Country. Our Country is being blessed and the good guys will win as the Lord is in control.

“Tolerance or respect is on one side of the coin, but truth is always on the other.” Dallin H. Oaks

“The face of sin today often wears the mask of tolerance. Do not be deceived; behind that facade is heartache, unhappiness, and pain.” Thomas S. Monson

“The word tolerance does not stand alone. It requires an object and a response to qualify it as a virtue. … Tolerance is often demanded but seldom returned. Beware of the word tolerance. It is a very unstable virtue.” Boyd K Packer

“We are not required to respect and tolerate wrong behavior.” Dallin H. Oaks

“Kindness in the communication but firmness in the truth.” Dallin H. Oaks

“Profanity, cohabitation, and Sabbath breaking—and many others, we should not be tolerant with ourselves. Dallin H. Oaks

The Lord is in charge. All we need to do is turn to Him. If you are feeling peace, humility, love, and patience, then you have the Lord’s spirit with you. If you don’t maintain this faith and peace during this world wide crisis that will happen in the next few days you may be deceived.

Is seems we have tolerated evil for a long time. Of course there is a righteous way of tolerating and also an evil way. This blog is about the proper way to know truth and be tolerant for a righteous cause. To be tolerant is to be patient.

“Knowing this, that the trying of your faith worketh patience. But let patience have her perfect work, that ye may be perfect and entire, wanting nothing.” James 1:2-3

“Nevertheless the Lord seeth fit to chasten his people; yea, he trieth their patience and their faith.” Mosiah 23:21

“We must cultivate tolerance and appreciation and respect one another.” Tolerance isn’t smugness. It doesn’t “put up” with what others do or how they behave. To have tolerance for someone who is different from us means to show them respect, and to allow them to be who they are, just as we hope they will permit us to be who we are without judging or condemning us for our choices about what to believe and how to live our lives.” Gordon B. Hinckley Quoted by LDS Living

Basis for Tolerance

To begin, it may be helpful to understand something of the roots, the purpose, and the command underlying tolerance. Tolerance is rooted in the reality that all are the offspring of God (see Acts 17:29). President Howard W. Hunter explained that understanding the universal fatherhood of God, His concern for each of us, and our relationship to each other “is a message of life and love that strikes squarely against all stifling traditions based on race, language, economic or political standing, educational rank, or cultural background.”[2] Elder Russell M. Nelson adds that comprehension of our divine relation to God and man “inspires desire to build bridges of cooperation instead of walls of segregation.”[3]

Tolerance fulfills a vital role in the plan of happiness. Elder John A. Widtsoe explains, “Among the principles of beauty and power which make up the Gospel, none is more conducive to peace than the Mormon doctrine of tolerance. We are taught to give due respect to the opinions and mode of life of our fellow beings.”[4] In a world of diversity and individual agency, the practical intent of tolerance is to avoid conflict and promote peace. Where deep differences remain, tolerance provides a meaningful degree of societal harmony. ” Defining and Teaching Tolerance Eric-Jon K. Marlowe

Balancing Truth & Tolerance

By Elder Dallin H. Oaks Of the Quorum of the Twelve Apostles From a Church Educational System devotional address delivered on September 11, 2011. For the full text in English, go to lds.org/broadcasts/article/ces-devotionals/2011/01/truth-and-tolerance.

The existence and nature of truth is one of the fundamental questions of mortal life. Jesus told the Roman governor Pilate that He came into the world to “bear witness unto the truth.” That unbeliever responded, “What is truth?” (John 18:37–38). Earlier the Savior had declared, “I am the way, the truth, and the life” (John 14:6). In modern revelation, He declared, “Truth is knowledge of things as they are, and as they were, and as they are to come” (D&C 93:24).

We believe in absolute truth, including the existence of God and the right and wrong established by His commandments. We know that the existence of God and the existence of absolute truth are fundamental to life on this earth, whether they are believed in or not. We also know that evil exists and that some things are simply, seriously, and everlastingly wrong.

Shocking reports of large-scale thievery and lying in civilized societies suggest a moral vacuum in which many have little sense of right and wrong. Widespread rioting, pillaging, and cheating have caused many to wonder whether we are losing the moral foundation Western countries have received from their Judeo-Christian heritage.¹

It is well to worry about our moral foundation. We live in a world where more and more persons of influence are teaching and acting out a belief that there is no absolute right and wrong—that all authority and all rules of behavior are man-made choices that can prevail over the commandments of God. Many even question whether there is a God.

The philosophy of moral relativism, which holds that each person is free to choose for him or herself what is right and wrong, is becoming the unofficial creed for many in the United States and other Western nations. At the extreme level, evil acts that used to be localized and covered up like a boil are now legalized and paraded like a banner. Persuaded by this philosophy, many of the rising generation are caught up in self-serving pleasures, pornography, dishonesty, foul language, revealing attire, pagan painting and piercing of body parts, and degrading sexual indulgence.

Many religious leaders teach the existence of God as the ultimate lawgiver, by whose command certain behavior is absolutely right and true and other behavior is absolutely wrong and untrue.² Bible and Book of Mormon prophets foresaw this time, when men would be “lovers of pleasures more than lovers of God” (2 Timothy 3:4) and, indeed, when men would deny God (see Jude 1:4; 2 Nephi 28:5; Moroni 7:17; D&C 29:22).

In this troubled circumstance, we who believe in God and the corollary truth of absolute right and wrong have the challenge of living in a godless and increasingly amoral world. In this circumstance, all of us—especially the rising generation—have a duty to stand up and speak out to affirm that God exists and that there are absolute truths that His commandments establish.

Many teachers in schools, colleges, and universities are teaching and practicing relative morality. This is shaping the attitudes of many young people who are taking their places as the teachers of our children and the shapers of public attitudes through the media and popular entertainment. This philosophy of moral relativism denies what millions of believing Christians, Jews, and Muslims consider fundamental, and this denial creates serious problems for all of us. What believers should do about this introduces the second of my twin subjects, tolerance.

Tolerance is defined as a friendly and fair attitude toward unfamiliar or different opinions and practices or toward the persons who hold or practice them. As modern transportation and communication have brought all of us into closer proximity to different peoples and different ideas, we have greater need for tolerance.

This greater exposure to diversity both enriches our lives and complicates them. We are enriched by associations with different peoples, which remind us of the wonderful diversity of the children of God. But diversity in cultures and values also challenges us to identify what can be embraced as consistent with our gospel culture and values and what cannot be. In this way, diversity increases the potential for conflict and requires us to be more thoughtful about the nature of tolerance. What is tolerance, when does it apply, and when does it not apply?

These are harder questions for those who affirm the existence of God and absolute truth than for those who believe in moral relativism. The weaker one’s belief in God and the fewer one’s moral absolutes, the fewer the occasions when the ideas or practices of others will confront one with the challenge to be tolerant. For example, an atheist has no need to decide what kinds and occasions of profanity or blasphemy can be tolerated and what kinds should be confronted. Persons who don’t believe in God or in absolute truth in moral matters can see themselves as the most tolerant of persons. For them, almost anything goes. This belief system can tolerate almost any behavior and almost any person. Unfortunately, some who believe in moral relativism seem to have difficulty tolerating those who insist that there is a God who should be respected and that there are certain moral absolutes that should be observed.

Three Absolute Truths

So what does tolerance mean to us and other believers, and what are our special challenges in applying it? I begin with three absolute truths. I express them as an Apostle of the Lord Jesus Christ, but I believe that most of these ideas are shared by believers generally.

First, all persons are brothers and sisters under God, taught within their various religions to love and do good to one another. President Gordon B. Hinckley (1910–2008) expressed this idea for Latter-day Saints: “Each of us [from various religious denominations] believes in the fatherhood of God, although we may differ in our interpretations of Him. Each of us is part of a great family, the human family, sons and daughters of God, and therefore brothers and sisters. We must work harder to build mutual respect, an attitude of forbearance, with tolerance one for another regardless of the doctrines and philosophies which we may espouse.”³

Note that President Hinckley spoke of mutual respect as well as tolerance. Living together with mutual respect for one another’s differences is a challenge in today’s world. However—and here I express a second absolute truth—this living with differences is what the gospel of Jesus Christ teaches us we must do.

The kingdom of God is like leaven, Jesus taught (see Matthew 13:33). Leaven—yeast—is hidden away in the larger mass until the whole is leavened, which means raised by its influence. Our Savior also taught that His followers will have tribulation in the world (see John 16:33), that their numbers and dominions will be small (see 1 Nephi 14:12), and that they will be hated because they are not of the world (see John 17:14). But that is our role. We are called to live with other children of God who do not share our faith or our values and who do not have the covenant obligations we have assumed. We are to be in the world but not of the world.

Because followers of Jesus Christ are commanded to be leaven, we must seek tolerance from those who hate us for not being of the world. As part of this, we will sometimes need to challenge laws that would impair our freedom to practice our faith, doing so in reliance on our constitutional rights to the free exercise of religion. The big concern is “the ability of people of all faiths to work out their relationship with God and one another without the government looking over their shoulder.”⁴ That is why we need understanding and support when we must contend for religious freedom.

We must also practice tolerance and respect toward others. As the Apostle Paul taught, Christians should “follow after the things which make for peace” (Romans 14:19) and, as much as possible, “live peaceably with all men” (Romans 12:18). Consequently, we should be alert to honor the good we should see in all people and in many opinions and practices that differ from our own. As the Book of Mormon teaches:

“All things which are good cometh of God; …

“… wherefore, every thing which inviteth and enticeth to do good, and to love God, and to serve him, is inspired of God.

“Wherefore, take heed … that ye do not judge … that which is good and of God to be of the devil” (Moroni 7:12–14).

That approach to differences will yield tolerance and also respect toward us.

Our tolerance and respect for others and their beliefs does not cause us to abandon our commitment to the truths we understand and the covenants we have made. That is a third absolute truth. We are cast as combatants in the war between truth and error. There is no middle ground. We must stand up for truth, even while we practice tolerance and respect for beliefs and ideas different from our own and for the people who hold them.

Tolerance for Behavior

While we must practice tolerance and respect for others and their beliefs, including their right to explain and advocate their positions, we are not required to respect and tolerate wrong behavior. Our duty to truth requires us to seek relief from behavior that is wrong. This is easy with extreme behaviors that most believers and nonbelievers recognize as wrong or unacceptable.

As to less-extreme behaviors, where even believers disagree on whether they are wrong, the nature and extent of what we should tolerate is much more difficult to define. Thus, a thoughtful Latter-day Saint woman wrote me about her concern that “the world’s definition of ‘tolerance’ seems to be increasingly used in relation to tolerating wicked lifestyles.” She asked how the Lord would define tolerance.⁵

President Boyd K. Packer, President of the Quorum of the Twelve Apostles, has said: “The word tolerance does not stand alone. It requires an object and a response to qualify it as a virtue. … Tolerance is often demanded but seldom returned. Beware of the word tolerance. It is a very unstable virtue.”⁶

This inspired caution reminds us that for persons who believe in absolute truth, tolerance for behavior is like a two-sided coin. Tolerance or respect is on one side of the coin, but truth is always on the other. You cannot possess or use the coin of tolerance without being conscious of both sides.

Our Savior applied this principle. When He faced the woman taken in adultery, Jesus spoke the comforting words of tolerance: “Neither do I condemn thee.” Then, as He sent her away, He spoke the commanding words of truth: “Go, and sin no more” (John 8:11). We should all be edified and strengthened by this example of speaking both tolerance and truth: kindness in the communication but firmness in the truth.

Another thoughtful Latter-day Saint wrote: “I often hear the name of the Lord taken in vain, and I also have acquaintances who tell me that they are living with their boyfriends. I have found that observance of the Sabbath is almost obsolete. How can I keep my covenant to stand as a witness and not offend these people?”⁷

I begin with our personal conduct. In applying the sometimes-competing demands of truth and tolerance to these three behaviors—profanity, cohabitation, and Sabbath breaking—and many others, we should not be tolerant with ourselves. We should be ruled by the demands of truth. We should be strong in keeping the commandments and our covenants, and we should repent and improve when we fall short.

President Thomas S. Monson has taught: “The face of sin today often wears the mask of tolerance. Do not be deceived; behind that facade is heartache, unhappiness, and pain. … If your so-called friends urge you to do anything you know to be wrong, you be the one to make a stand for right, even if you stand alone.”⁸

Similarly, with our children and others whom we have a duty to teach, our duty to truth is paramount. Of course, teaching efforts bear fruit only through the agency of others, so our teaching must always be done with love, patience, and persuasion.

I turn now to the obligations of truth and tolerance in our personal relations with associates who use profanity in our presence, live with a partner out of wedlock, or do not observe the Sabbath day appropriately.

Our obligation to tolerance means that none of these behaviors—or others we consider deviations from the truth—should ever cause us to react with hateful communications or unkind actions. But our obligation to truth has its own set of requirements and its own set of blessings. When we “speak every man truth with his neighbour” and when we “[speak] the truth in love” (Ephesians 4:15, 25), we are acting as servants of the Lord Jesus Christ, doing His work. Angels will stand with us, and He will send His Holy Spirit to guide us.

In this sensitive matter we should first consider whether—or the extent to which—we should communicate to our associates what we know to be true about their behavior. In most cases this decision can depend on how directly we are personally affected by it.

Profanity consistently used in our presence is an appropriate cause for us to communicate the fact that this is offensive to us. Profanity used out of our presence by nonbelievers probably would not be an occasion for us to confront the offenders.

Cohabitation we know to be a serious sin, in which Latter-day Saints must not engage. When practiced by those around us, it can be private behavior or something we are asked to condone, sponsor, or facilitate. In the balance between truth and tolerance, tolerance can be dominant where the behavior does not involve us personally. But if the cohabitation does involve us personally, we should be governed by our duty to truth. For example, it is one thing to ignore serious sins when they are private; it is quite another thing to be asked to sponsor or implicitly endorse them, such as by housing them in our own homes.

On Sabbath observance, we should perhaps explain our belief that our observance of the Sabbath, including our partaking of the sacrament, restores us spiritually and makes us better people for the rest of the week. Then, to other believers, we might express appreciation for the fact that we share common ground on what is most vital: each of us believes in God and in the existence of absolute truth, even though we differ in our definitions of those fundamentals. Beyond that, we should remember the Savior’s teaching that we should avoid contention (see 3 Nephi 11:29–30) and that our example and our preaching should “be the warning voice, every man to his neighbor, in mildness and in meekness” (D&C 38:41).

In all of this we should not presume to judge our neighbors or associates on the ultimate effect of their behaviors. That judgment is the Lord’s, not ours.

Principles in the Public Square

When believers enter the public square to try to influence the making or the administration of laws motivated by their beliefs, they should apply some different principles.

First, they must seek the inspiration of the Lord to be selective and wise in choosing which true principles they seek to promote by law or executive action. Generally, they should refrain from seeking laws or administrative action to facilitate beliefs that are distinctive to believers, such as the enforcement of acts of worship, even by implication. Believers can be less cautious in seeking government action that would serve principles broader than merely facilitating the practice of their beliefs, such as laws concerning public health, safety, and morals.

Believers can and must seek laws that will preserve religious freedom. Along with the ascendancy of moral relativism, the United States and other nations are experiencing a disturbing reduction in overall public esteem for religion. Once an accepted part of American life, religion is now suspect in the minds of many. Some influential voices even question the extent to which our constitutions should protect the free exercise of religion, including the right to practice and preach religious principles.

This is a vital matter on which we who believe in a Supreme Being who has established absolute right and wrong in human behavior must unite to insist on our time-honored rights to exercise our religion, to vote our consciences on public issues, and to participate in elections and debates in the public square and the halls of justice. We must stand shoulder to shoulder with other believers to preserve and strengthen the freedom to advocate and practice our religious beliefs, whatever they are. For this purpose we must walk together on the same path in order to secure our freedom to pursue our separate ways when that is necessary according to our separate beliefs.

Second, when believers promote their positions in the public square, they should always be tolerant of the opinions and positions of those who do not share their beliefs. Believers must always speak with love and show patience, understanding, and compassion toward their adversaries. Christian believers are under command to love their neighbors (see Luke 10:27) and to forgive (see Matthew 18:21–35). They should also remember the Savior’s teaching to “bless them that curse [them], do good to them that hate [them], and pray for them which despitefully use [them], and persecute [them]” (Matthew 5:44).

Third, believers should not be deterred by the familiar charge that they are trying to legislate morality. Many areas of the law are based on Judeo-Christian morality and have been for centuries. Western civilization is based on morality and cannot exist without it. As the second U.S. president, John Adams, declared: “Our Constitution was made only for a moral and religious people. It is wholly inadequate to the government of any other.”⁹

Fourth, believers should not shrink from seeking laws to maintain public conditions or policies that assist them in practicing the requirements of their faith where those conditions or policies are also favorable to the public health, safety, or morals. For example, even though religious beliefs are behind many criminal laws and some family laws, such laws have a long-standing history of appropriateness in democratic societies. But where believers are in the majority, they should always be sensitive to the views of the minority.

Finally, the spirit of our balance of truth and tolerance is applied in these words of President Hinckley: “Let us reach out to those in our community who are not of our faith. Let us be good neighbors, kind and generous and gracious. Let us be involved in good community causes. There may be situations where, with serious moral issues involved, we cannot bend on matters of principle. But in such instances we can politely disagree without being disagreeable. We can acknowledge the sincerity of those whose positions we cannot accept. We can speak of principles rather than personalities.”¹⁰

Watchman on the Tower

The Bible teaches that one of the functions of a prophet is to be a “watchman” to warn Israel (see Ezekiel 3:17; 33:7). In revelation the Lord added this counsel for modern Zion: “Set … a watchman upon the tower,” who will “[see] the enemy while he [is] yet afar off” and give warning to save the vineyard “from the hands of the destroyer” (D&C 101:45, 54).

I speak as one of those watchmen. I assure you that my message is true. I proclaim my knowledge that God lives! I testify that Jesus Christ is the Son of God, crucified for the sins of the world, and that He reaches out to each of us with the timeless invitation to receive His peace by learning of Him and walking in His way (see D&C 19:23).

Tolerance for behavior is like a two-sided coin. Tolerance or respect is on one side of the coin, but truth is always on the other.

We must stand up for truth, even while we practice tolerance and respect for beliefs and ideas different from our own.

Because followers of Jesus Christ are to be in the world but not of the world, we must seek tolerance from those who hate us for not being of the world.

As the Apostle Paul taught, Christians should “follow after the things which make for peace” and, as much as possible, “live peaceably with all men.”

While we must practice tolerance and respect for others and their beliefs, including their right to explain and advocate their positions, we are not required to respect and tolerate wrong behavior.

We should all be edified and strengthened by the Savior’s example of speaking both tolerance and truth: kindness in the communication but firmness in the truth.

We must stand shoulder to shoulder with other believers to preserve and strengthen the freedom to advocate and practice our religious beliefs.

https://www.churchofjesuschrist.org/study/ensign/2013/02/balancing-truth-and-tolerance?lang=eng

According to The Church of Jesus Christ of Latter-day Saints, there is no official Church doctrine on this issue. Individual members are free to believe as they wish concerning this matter. (Some believe that He was married; and others believe that He wasn’t. Personally I believe Christ was married and here is why:

Celestial Marriage

“Therefore, if a man marry him a wife in the world, and he marry her not by me nor by my word, and he covenant with her so long as he is in the world and she with him, their covenant and marriage are not of force when they are dead, and when they are out of the world; therefore, they are not bound by any law when they are out of the world.” D&C 132:15

“And I will establish my covenant between me and thee and thy seed after thee in their generations for an everlasting covenant, to be a God unto thee, and to thy seed after thee.” Genesis 17:7

Accusations

“Since eternal marriage is one of the ordinances required to achieve exaltation, many Latter-day Saints do indeed believe that Jesus Christ was married. The question is: What is it about Jesus being married that would make Him less of our Lord and Savior? Yet, Latter-day Saints are accused of not being Christian because of such beliefs.

William Phipps, Professor of Religion and Philosophy at Davis and Elkins College in West Virginia, wrote an article and a book declaring his belief that the Lord Jesus Christ was married.^[1] Are all Presbyterians not Christians on account of Reverend Phipps’ beliefs, or do different standards exist for Evangelicals than for those “Satanic cultists,” the “Mormons?” Perhaps those who make such accusations would counter that it is just Phipps who is not a Christian, on account of his belief that Jesus Christ was married. But again, why would they damn all Latter-day Saints because some Latter-day Saints believe something that is not official LDS doctrine?” FairMormon

I have heard all my life that Christ was probably married according to wonderful parents. It just didn’t seem like if our ultimate goal in life is to be like Christ and we are expected to be married and have a posterity, that I am sure Christ was married and also had children. It’s part of that Faith I have been blessed with.

I have also been asked, if I was to die and then become ressurrected, who is the first person I would love to visit first? That is obviously my eternal companion Stacy. That is why the story of Mary Magdalen has always made sense to me. I think we make the complicated way too difficult. I can’t answer this question for you but I feel very comfortable with my belief that Christ was married.

I have a very good friend who is related to both Brigham Young and to Joseph Fielding Smith by marriage who said this to me. “There were three women, not men who went to the sepulcher to anoint Christ’s nude body with spices and oil.  In Jewish law, only one’s wife or wives could see one’s naked body. Christ had children.” Good Friend

This statement also makes sense to me. I would love for one of my readers to verify the information about only a wife in Jewish law to see her husband nude. It sounds like a very interesting investigation.

The Reality of the Resurrection
By Richard D. Draper

The Empty Tomb

Only two facts connected with the Resurrection are common to all four Gospel narratives: that the tomb was empty and that Mary Magdalene was either the first or among the first to see it. Matthew writes that before Mary and “the other Mary” had reached the tomb near dawn, an angel descended in glory, frightening the guards into immobility, and rolled back the stone. The angel remained there until the women arrived; then he reassured them: “He is not here: for he is risen, as he said. Come, see the place where the Lord lay.

“And go quickly, and tell his disciples that he is risen from the dead; and, behold, he goeth before you into Galilee; there shall ye see him: lo, I have told you” (Matt. 28:1–7).

The Gospel of Mark adds more information. He identifies the other Mary as the mother of James and notes the presence of another woman, Salome. Finding the tomb open, the women entered and were afraid upon seeing “a young man sitting on the right side, clothed in a long white garment” (Mark 16:1–5). He reassured them, saying, “Be not affrighted: Ye seek Jesus of Nazareth, which was crucified: he is risen; he is not here: behold the place where they laid him…

Luke’s account notes that three women—Mary Magdalene, Mary the mother of James, and Joanna (probably Salome)—along with others went to the tomb early Sunday morning to finish the burial procedures. Finding the tomb open, they went inside and saw “two men [standing] by them in shining garments” (Luke 24:3–4). The frightened women were quickly reassured with the words “Why seek ye the living among the dead?

“He is not here, but is risen: remember how he spake unto you when he was yet in Galilee…” The Reality of the Resurrection By Richard D. Draper

Mary Magdalene and Other Women Witnesses

Not only were women the first to enjoy the angelic witness to the Lord’s resurrection, but also they were the first to see the risen Lord. Mary of Magdala was the first such witness (see Mark 16:9–10; John 20:1). Drawn back to the tomb, she stood near it for a time, weeping. Then, looking inside the tomb, she saw two angels, likely the same two she had seen earlier and who had testified to the other women.

But Mary did not recognize the angels as divine. When they inquired why she wept, she expressed her fears and, before they could respond, left. At this point the Savior appeared to her. Initially she did not recognize him; but upon his saying her name, “she turned herself, and saith unto him, Rabboni; which is to say, Master. https://www.churchofjesuschrist.org/study/ensign/1994/04/the-reality-of-the-resurrection?lang=eng

I believe it is very likely that Christ was married to these three women and maybe others. No one knows for sure, but it sure feels right.

Letter from Joseph Fielding Smith

This letter was sent to me by a friend today.

Joseph Fielding Smith Signature from the Internet Below

A Good Friend and Staunch Member of the Church.

My good friend was sent the above letter that has been circulating on the internet that was sent to him. What a wonderful letter this is. It sounds like Joseph Fielding Smith believed Christ was married if this letter is accurate. I looked on the internet to verify signatures of Joseph Fielding Smith and it looks legitimate.

I love President Smith’s letter. (In 1963 he would have been the President of the Quorum of the Twelve). I especially loved the last thing Pres Smith wrote in his own handwriting that he answered President Seith saying,

*Mosiah 15: 10-12 Please read your Book of Mormon!
**Yes! “But do not preach it! The Savior advised us not to cast pearls before swine.” Signed: Joseph Fielding Smith

(See what my good friend said about this answer from Pres Smith below).

My Good Friend Again!

My same good friend who’s wife is the granddaughter of Joseph Fielding Smith sent the above letter to me and then in an email he said, “I forwarded this letter to my wife who knew President Joseph Fielding Smith because her father would take his children to visit his grandfather and so she has pictures sitting on Joseph Fielding Smith’s lap and with the family.  After reading the attached letter she told me a funny story.

Notice in President Smith’s response, he asked the letter writer to Please read the Book of Mormon. I believe he answered the person’s question anyway, because he knew it was not easy to answer their questions from the scriptures without knowing a lot about Jewish customs, etc.

During an Elder’s Quorum meeting, a question came up that none of the [E]elders could answer, so they asked my father-in-law to write his grandfather and ask him the answer.  When he got President Smith’s response it said something to the effect – “I will answer your question this time, but in the future, read your scriptures.” So, even President Smith’s grandson received the same admonition from his grandfather [as is contained in the letter above].

When my father-in-law died, we received many of the books from his personal library and many were signed by Joseph Fielding Smith.

Joseph Field[ing] Smith was direct and could be abrasive, but as I grow older and see where the soft touch is taking us, I admire him more and more.

I do not know where my FB friend got this letter and he might not reveal his source, but I suspect it is a letter than has been circulated among many.  I think that by not preaching it, he meant to not put it in our missionary lessons.” Good Friend 

My Friends the Stoddard’s have an excellent website full of answers, books, and DVD’s, and I appreciate all they do for me and the Savior. Please pray for James Sr, he can really use it right now.

“The legendary search for the Holy Grail has resonated with millions for centuries! What is the Holy Grail, and why is this legendary symbol important to the lives of Joseph Smith and the Son of God? Was Jesus Christ married and did He have children? Discover your own heritage in a way you may have never imagined!” James and Hannah Stoddard Watch the Trailer below:

Prophetic Statements From Joseph Smith Foundation Website Below.

Brigham Young

The Scripture says that He, the Lord, came walking in the Temple, with His train; [Isaiah 6:1] I do not know who they were, unless His wives and children; but at any rate they filled the Temple, and how many there were who could not get into the Temple I cannot say. This is the account given by Isaiah, whether he told the truth or not I leave everybody to judge for himself. ¹

George Q. Cannon

The Lord has hid the chosen seed in this way (among the poor and humble). There are in this audience descendants of the old Twelve Apostles, and–shall I say it?  Yes, descendants of the Son of God Himself.  He has seed among us; the Apostles and the Prophets have; and their seed will be known after a while, for the Lord will reveal their genealogy. ²

Heber C. Kimball

Are you ever going to be prepared to see God, Jesus Christ, His angels, or comprehend His servants, unless you take a faithful and prayerful course? Did you actually know Joseph Smith? No. Do you know brother Brigham? No. Do you know brother Heber? No, you do not. Do you know the Twelve? You do not, if you did, you would begin to know God, and learn that those men who are chosen to direct and counsel you are near kindred to God and to Jesus Christ, for the keys, power, and authority of the kingdom of God are in that lineage. I speak of these things with a view to arouse your feelings and your faithfulness towards God the Father, and His Son Jesus Christ, that you may pray and be humble, and penitent. ³

“Heber taught, as did a few other Mormons of his day, that Christ was married—indeed that Christ was married to both Mary and Martha and that the famous wedding of Cana was in reality Christ’s own wedding. In his own mind Heber was not only a follower of Christ, but a literal descendant. In his last public sermon, two months before his death, he said, “You do not know who Heber C. Kimball is, or you would do better.” If one can accept the possibility of Christ’s marriage, then such a descent is possible.” ⁴

Orson Hyde

“[Quoted John 2] Gentlemen, that is as plain as the translators, or different councils over this Scripture, dare allow it to go to the world, but the thing is there; it is told; Jesus was the bridegroom at the marriage of Cana of Galilee, and he told them what to do.

Now there was actually a marriage; and if Jesus was not the bridegroom on that occasion, please tell who was. If any man can show this, and prove that it was not the Savior of the world, then I will acknowledge I am in error. We say it was Jesus Christ who was married, to be brought into the relation whereby he could see his seed, before he was crucified. “Has he indeed passed by the nature of angels, and taken upon himself the seed of Abraham, to die without leaving a seed to bear his name on the earth?” No. But when the secret is fully out, the seed of the blessed shall be gathered in, in the last days; and he who has not the blood of Abraham flowing in his veins, who has not one particle of the Savior’s in him, I am afraid is a stereotyped Gentile, who will be left out and not be gathered in the last days; for I tell you it is the chosen of God, the seed of the blessed, that shall be gathered. I do not despise to be called a son of Abraham, if he had a dozen wives; or to be called a brother, a son, a child of the Savior, if he had Mary, and Martha, and several others, as wives; and though he did cast seven devils out of one of them, it is all the same to me.

Well, then, he shall see his seed, and who shall declare his generation, for he was cut off from the earth? I shall say here, that before the Savior died, he looked upon his own natural children, as we look upon ours; he saw his seed, and immediately afterwards he was cut off from the earth; but who shall declare his generation? They had no father to hold them in honorable remembrance; they passed into the shades of obscurity, never to be exposed to mortal eye as the seed of the blessed one. For no doubt had they been exposed to the eye of the world, those infants might have shared the same fate as the children in Jerusalem in the days of Herod, when all the children were ordered to be slain under such an age, with the hopes of slaying the infant Savior. They might have suffered by the hand of the assassin, as the sons of many kings have done who were heirs apparent to the thrones of their fathers.

History is replete with circumstances of neck-or-nothing politicians dyeing their hands in the blood of those who stood in their way to the throne or to power.

That seed has had its influence upon the chosen of God in the last days. The same spirit inspires them that inspires their father, who bled and died upon the cross after the manner of the flesh. ⁵

I discover that some of the Eastern papers represent me as a great blasphemer, because I said, in my lecture on Marriage, at our last Conference, that Jesus Christ was married at Cana of Galilee, that Mary, Martha, and others were his wives, and that he begat children.  All that I have to say in reply to that charge is this—they worship a Savior that is too pure and holy to fulfil the commands of his Father. I worship one that is just pure and holy enough “to fulfil all righteousness;” not only the righteous law of baptism, but the still more righteous and important law “to multiply and replenish the earth.” Startle not at this! For even the Father himself honored that law by coming down to Mary, without a natural body, and begetting a son; and if Jesus begat children, he only “did that which he had seen his Father do.” ⁶

It will be borne in mind that once on a time, there was a marriage in Cana of Galilee; and on a careful reading of that transaction, it will be discovered that no less a person than Jesus Christ was married on that occasion. If he was never married, his intimacy with Mary and Martha, and the other Mary also whom Jesus loved, must have been highly unbecoming and improper to say the best of it.

Editor’s note: The above quote validates what my good friend said about the three women who first saw Christ.

Orson Hyde continues, “I will venture to say that if Jesus Christ were now to pass through the most pious countries in Christendom with a train of women, such as used to follow him, fondling about him, combing his hair, anointing him with precious ointment, washing his feet with tears, and wiping them with the hair of their heads and unmarried, or even married, he would be mobbed, tarred, and feathered, and rode, not on an ass, but on a rail. What did the old Prophet mean when he said (speaking of Christ), “He shall see his seed, prolong his days, &c.” Did Jesus consider it necessary to fulfil every righteous command or requirement of his Father? He most certainly did. This be witnessed by submitting to baptism under the hands of John. “Thus it becometh us to fulfil all righteousness,” said he. Was it God’s commandment to man, in the beginning, to multiply and replenish the earth? None can deny this, neither that it was a righteous command; for upon an obedience to this, depended the perpetuity of our race. Did Christ come to destroy the law or the Prophets, or to fulfil them? He came to fulfil. Did he multiply, and did he see his seed? Did he honor his Father’s law by complying with it, or did he not? Others may do as they like, but I will not charge our Savior with neglect or transgression in this or any other duty.

At this doctrine the longfaced hypocrite and the sanctimonious bigot will probably cry, blasphemy! Horrid perversion of God’s word! Wicked wretch! He is not fit to live! &c., &c. But the wise and reflecting will consider, read, and pray. If God be not our Father, grandfather, or great grandfather, or some kind of a father in reality, in deed and in truth, why are we taught to say, “Our Father who art in heaven?” How much so ever of holy horror this doctrine may excite in persons not impregnated with the blood of Christ, and whose minds are consequently dark and benighted, it may excite still more when they are told that if none of the natural blood of Christ flows in their veins, they are not the chosen or elect of God. Object not, therefore too strongly against the marriage of Christ, but remember that in the last days, secret and hidden things must come to light, and that your life also (which is the blood) is hid with Christ in God. ⁷

Wilford Woodruff

“Sunday I Attended the Sabbath School Conference …. Joseph F. Smith spoke one hour & 25 minutes. He spoke upon the Marriage in Cana at Galilee. He taught Jesus was the Bridgegroom and Mary & Martha the brides. He also referred to Luke 10 ch. 38 to 42 verse, Also John 11 ch. 2 & 5 vers John 12 Ch 3d vers, John 20 8 to 18. Joseph Smith spoke upon these passages to show that Mary & Martha manifested much closer relationship than merely a believer which looks consister. He did not think that Jesus who decended through Poligamous families from Abraham down & who fulfilled all the Law even baptism by immersion would have lived and died without being married.” ⁸

Orson Pratt, The Seer

Jedediah M. Grant

What does old Celsus say, who was a physician in the first century, whose medical works are esteemed very highly at the present time. His works on theology were burned with fire by the Catholics, they were so shocked at what they called their impiety. Celsus was a heathen philosopher; and what does he say upon the subject of Christ and his Apostles, and their belief? He says, “The grand reason why the Gentiles and philosophers of his school persecuted Jesus Christ, was, because he had so many wives; there were Elizabeth, and Mary, and a host of others that followed him.” After Jesus went from the stage of action, the Apostles followed the example of their master. For instance, John the beloved disciple, writes in his second Epistle, “Unto the elect lady and her children, whom I love in the truth.” Again, he says, “Having many things to write unto you (or communicate), I would not write with paper and ink: but I trust to come unto you, and speak face to face, that our joy may be full.” Again—“The children of thy elect sister greet thee.” This ancient philosopher says they were both John’s wives. Paul says, “Mine answer to them that do examine me is this … Have we not power to lead about a sister, a wife, as well as other apostles, and as the brethren of the Lord, and Cephas.” He, according to Celsus, had a numerous train of wives.  The grand reason of the burst of public sentiment in anathemas upon Christ and his disciples, causing his crucifixion, was evidently based upon polygamy, according to the testimony of the philosophers who rose in that age. A belief in the doctrine of a plurality of wives caused the persecution of Jesus and his followers. We might almost think they were “Mormons.” ⁹

Scripture

D&C 113:1-6

Who is the Stem of Jesse spoken of in the 1st, 2d, 3d, 4th, and 5th verses of the 11th chapter of Isaiah?
Verily thus saith the Lord: It is Christ.
What is the rod spoken of in the first verse of the 11th chapter of Isaiah, that should come of the Stem of Jesse?
Behold, thus saith the Lord: It is a servant in the hands of Christ, who is partly a descendant of Jesse as well as of Ephraim, or of the house of Joseph, on whom there is laid much power.
What is the root of Jesse spoken of in the 10th verse of the 11th chapter?
Behold, thus saith the Lord, it is a descendant of Jesse, as well as of Joseph, unto whom rightly belongs the priesthood, and the keys of the kingdom, for an ensign, and for the gathering of my people in the last days.

1. Brigham Young, “Gathering the Poor—Religion a Science“, Journal of Discourses, vol. 13, pp. 300-309, November 13, 1870.
2. President George Q. Cannon, Solemn Assembly in SLC Temple, 2 July 1899, Meeting Notes, Utah State Historical Society, p. 376
3. Heber C. Kimball, “Obedience Produces Confidence, Etc.“, Journal of Discourses, vol. 4, pp. 247-252, March 1, 1857.
4. Biography of Apostle Heber C. Kimball, p. 275
5. Orson Hyde, “The Marriage Relations”, Journal of Discourses, vol. 2, pp. 75-87, October 6th, 1854.
6. Orson Hyde, “The Judgments of God on the United States—The Saints and the World”, Journal of Discourses, vol. 2, pp. 202-211, March 18th, 1855.
7. Orson Hyde, “Man the Head of Woman, Etc.“, Journal of Discourses, vol. 4, pp. 257-263, .
8. The Prophet Wilford Woodruff wrote in his journal on July 22, 1883
9. Jedediah M. Grant, “Uniformity“, Journal of Discourses, vol. 1, pp. 341-349, August 7, 1853.

JESUS CHRIST, MARRIAGE OF wiki July 9, 2015 Articles (Wiki), People (Wiki), Wiki

See my Blog about:
“The Chosen” and Mary Magdalene here

Our ability to communicate all over the world has been a great gift from the Lord. Remember all things were created spiritually before they were created temporally. The Lord has always had the systems of communications that are far better and eternal compared to our simple technology of the internet and smart phones. The power of prayer and the Priesthood are far better systems we need to rely on more often. Just think if we could as easily call down the angels of heaven or hear the voice of the Lord, just as easily as we are able to send an email or speak with a friend on the phone? What eternal power we can possess. It’s there for us to utilize.

I’m saddened that the worlds tech companies have been taking away our freedom of speech. We can’t trust google, facebook, twitter, youtube, amazon, or other giant tech companies. I’ve been deeply concerned for a long time about how our news is censored at CBS, NBC, ABC, and even at FOX. We are not getting the full truth anymore. We must learn to get our truth from the Scriptures and the Prophets. We as fathers and mothers can utilize the Keys we hold with our families and share truth with them.

Here are a few suggestions if you are tired of fake news and censoring tech companies:

Duckduckgo not google
Mewe not facebook
Signal not twitter
Vimeo not youtube
Newsmax not Fox News

If you have other suggestions I would love you to let me know about them.

Organic Evolution – Social Evolution – Political Evolution – The Internet 

“We all have stewardships for which we must account to the Lord. Unfortunately, some men who do not honor their stewardships may have an adverse effect on many people. Often the greater the man’s responsibility, the more good or evil he can accomplish. The Lord usually gives a man a long enough rope and sufficient time to determine whether that man wants to pull himself into the presence of God or drop off somewhere below. There are some regrettable things being said and done by some people in the church today. As President Clark so well warned, the ravening wolves are amongst us. From our own membership and they more than any others are clothed in sheep’s clothing because they wear the habiliments of the priesthood. We should be careful of them.”

“We are all grateful for the Internet and the amazing communication connection it provides.  I believe that the best thing I can do is to share the message of gladness that the gospel of Jesus Christ provides, and I am grateful that the Internet is helping me do that in a major way.  However, like any tool, it can be used for good or evil.

More than a century before the Internet was invented into the amazing tool that it is, Darwin brought forth the theory of “organic evolution”, and the world applauded his genius. Based on Darwin’s work, John Wesley Powell, et. al. introduced “social evolution”, which brought about the doctrine of “manifest destiny,” and which caused the native American Indians to be treated as savages and their way of life destroyed.

Then, as history marched on, based on Powell’s and Lewis Henry Morgan’s ideas, Marx and Engels gave the world “political evolution”  the forerunner of communism and socialism.

Now, with the Internet, the prevalence of these three evolutionary theories continues to grow across the world.  We are seeing the world’s masses acceptance of the same.  Have we been globally deceived?  If so, the implications are enormous.

Our education systems and textbooks are full of these three theories, and we have seen an ever-increasing number of atheists who believe these theories, as they are increasingly propagated across the Internet.

As we see the prideful elite trying to destroy our liberty, the battle seems to be their desire to make the state sovereign (political evolution) versus God’s plan for individual sovereignty and leading to eternal life.  The writers of our inspired Declaration of Independence and the US Constitution had this individual sovereignty in their hearts and minds. Also, because the book that influenced them more than any other for their inspiration for these documents was the Bible…” David W. Allan

Sharing the Gospel Using the Internet
By Elder M. Russell Ballard

A Changing World

“In the span of nearly 80 years, I’ve seen many changes. When I began my mission in England in 1948, the most common way for people to get news was through newspapers and radio.

“How different the world is today. For many of you, if you read newspapers, the chances are you read them on the Internet. Ours is the world of cyberspace, cell phones that capture video, video and music downloads, social networks, text messaging and blogs, handhelds and podcasts.

This is the world of the future, with inventions undreamed of that will come in your lifetime as they have in mine. How will you use these marvelous inventions? More to the point, how will you use them to further the work of the Lord?

You have a great opportunity to be a powerful force for good in the Church and in the world. There is truth in the old adage that “the pen is mightier than the sword.”1 In many cases it is with words that you will accomplish the great things that you set out to do. And it’s principally about ways to share those words that I want to talk to you.

From its beginnings, The Church of Jesus Christ of Latter-day Saints has used the power of the printed word to spread the message of the restored gospel throughout the world. The Lord, over the centuries, has had a hand in inspiring people to invent tools that facilitate the spreading of the gospel. The Church has adopted and embraced those tools, including print, broadcast media, and the Internet.

There are perhaps few inventions that have had a greater impact on the world than the printing press, invented by the inspired Johannes Gutenberg around 1436. The printing press enabled knowledge, including that contained in the Holy Bible, to be shared more widely than ever before.

The Internet: A Modern Printing Press

Today we have a modern equivalent of the printing press in the Internet. The Internet allows everyone to be a publisher, to have his or her voice heard, and it is revolutionizing society. Before the Internet there were great barriers to printing. It took money, power, influence, and a great amount of time to publish. But today, because of the emergence of what some call “new media,” made possible by the Internet, many of those barriers have been removed. New media consists of tools on the Internet that make it possible for nearly anyone to publish or broadcast to either a large or a niche audience. I have mentioned some of these tools already. The emergence of new media is facilitating a worldwide conversation on almost every subject, including religion, and nearly everyone can participate. This modern equivalent of the printing press is not reserved only for the elite.

Now some of these tools—like any tool in an unpracticed or undisciplined hand—can be dangerous. The Internet can be used to proclaim the gospel of Jesus Christ and can just as easily be used to market the filth and sleaze of pornography. Computer applications like iTunes can be used to download uplifting and stirring music or the worst kind of antisocial lyrics full of profanity. Social networks on the Web can be used to expand healthy friendships as easily as they can be used by predators trying to trap the unwary. That is no different from how people choose to use television or movies or even a library. Satan is always quick to exploit the negative power of new inventions, to spoil and degrade, and to neutralize any effect for good. Make sure that the choices you make in the use of new media are choices that expand your mind, increase your opportunities, and feed your soul.

As you know, the new media has already profoundly impacted the old world of newspapers and other traditional media. Once upon a time, as a Church leader I might give a newspaper interview, then wait a day or two for it to appear somewhere deep inside the newspaper. Then that newspaper was thrown away, and whatever impact it might have had dissipated rather quickly.

Now, as I am leaving one appointment to go to the next, the report of my visit or interview begins almost immediately to appear on the newspaper’s Web site or on blogs, where it can be copied and distributed all over the Web. You can see how important the right words are today. Words recorded on the Internet do not disappear. Any Google or Yahoo! search is going to find one’s words, probably for a very long time.

A case in point: In 2007, NBC television came to Salt Lake for an interview with me as part of a piece they were producing on the Church. Reporter Ron Allen and I spent an hour together in the chapel in the Joseph Smith Memorial Building. We discussed the Church at length. A few days later the story appeared, and in the four-minute segment that aired, there was one short quote of about six seconds from the one-hour interview. That was just enough time for me to testify of our faith in Jesus Christ as the center of all we believe. I repeat, just six seconds were used from a 60-minute interview. Those six seconds are quite typical, actually, for members of the traditional TV media, who think and air in sound bites. The big difference from the old days to today is that the reporter also ran 15 minutes of our interview on the NBC Nightly News Web site. And those 15 minutes are still there. What we say is no longer on and off the screen in a flash, but it remains as part of a permanent archive and can appear on other sites that reuse the content. People using Internet search engines to hunt for topics about the Church will come across that interview and many others.

These tools allow organizations and individuals to completely bypass the news media and publish or broadcast their messages in their entirety to the intended audiences. For instance, last year the Church Public Affairs Department conducted an interview with Elder Dallin H. Oaks of the Quorum of the Twelve Apostles and Elder Lance B. Wickman of the Seventy regarding the Church’s position on same-gender attraction. In the old days, to communicate our message to the public on an issue like this we would have had to rely on the news media. But this probing interview was conducted by Church Public Affairs staff and posted in its entirety on the Church’s Web site, unfiltered by the news media.

Joining the Conversation

There are conversations going on about the Church constantly. Those conversations will continue whether or not we choose to participate in them. But we cannot stand on the sidelines while others, including our critics, attempt to define what the Church teaches. While some conversations have audiences in the thousands or even millions, most are much, much smaller. But all conversations have an impact on those who participate in them. Perceptions of the Church are established one conversation at a time.

The challenge is that there are too many people participating in conversations about the Church for our Church personnel to converse with and respond to individually. We cannot answer every question, satisfy every inquiry, and respond to every inaccuracy that exists. We need to remember that there is a difference between interest and mere curiosity. Sometimes people just want to know what the Church is. And some who seek answers want them to come directly from a member of the Church. They appreciate one-on-one conversation.

All of you know that members of The Church of Jesus Christ of Latter-day Saints are reminded and encouraged continually to share the gospel with others. The Church is always looking for the most effective ways to declare its message. Preaching the gospel of the Restoration has always been special to me. I loved being a missionary in England. I loved being a mission president in Canada. And I love my present calling, which allows me opportunities to share the message of the Restoration of the gospel to the world and to testify that God the Father and His Son, Jesus Christ, appeared to the Prophet Joseph Smith in 1820. Through Joseph, the gospel that Jesus established in New Testament times was brought back. It had been lost with the deaths of the Apostles of old. I can share with the world the knowledge that priesthood authority, the doctrine, and the ordinances of the New Testament Church are once again on the earth. This is the most important work that we can participate in.

Now, may I ask that you join the conversation by participating on the Internet to share the gospel and to explain in simple and clear terms the message of the Restoration. Most of you already know that if you have access to the Internet you can start a blog in minutes and begin sharing what you know to be true. You can download videos from Church and other appropriate sites, including newsroom.lds.org, and send them to your friends. You can write to media sites on the Internet that report on the Church and voice your views as to the accuracy of the reports. This, of course, requires that you understand the basic principles of the gospel. It is essential that you are able to offer a clear and correct witness of gospel truths. It is also important that you and the people to whom you testify understand that you do not speak for the Church as a whole. You speak as one member—but you testify of the truths you have come to know.

Far too many people have a poor understanding of the Church because most of the information they hear about us is from news media reports that are often driven by controversies. Too much attention to controversy has a negative impact on peoples’ perceptions of what The Church of Jesus Christ of Latter-day Saints really is.

Recently a columnist writing in a major U.S. newspaper was irresponsibly inaccurate in his description of the Church and our beliefs and practices. Dozens, perhaps even hundreds, of Church members and others who understand our beliefs commented on the newspaper’s Web site, correcting the misconceptions he was spreading and calling for accuracy.

Examples of What You Can Do

Let me give you a few other examples of how Church members are using the new media.

A Church member living in the Midwest of the United States makes a concerted effort to share the gospel every day, in person. He then writes a blog about his daily endeavors to share the teachings of the Book of Mormon and to give pass-along cards to all he meets. His effort to share the gospel so diligently is admirable, and his further effort to write about it no doubt inspires many others to do the same.

Others have recorded and posted their testimonies of the Restoration, the teachings of the Book of Mormon, and other gospel subjects on popular video-sharing sites. You too can tell your story to nonmembers in this way. Use stories and words that they will understand. Talk honestly and sincerely about the impact the gospel has had in your life, about how it has helped you overcome weaknesses or challenges and helped define your values. The audiences for these and other new media tools may often be small, but the cumulative effect of thousands of such stories can be great. The combined effort is certainly worth the outcome if but a few are influenced by your words of faith and love of God and His Son, Jesus Christ.

The Restoration of the gospel of Jesus Christ has no doubt had a powerful impact on your life. It has, in part, shaped who you are and what your future will be. Do not be afraid to share with others your experiences as a follower of the Lord Jesus Christ. We all have interesting stories that have influenced our identity. Sharing those stories is a nonthreatening way to talk to others. Telling those stories can help demystify the Church. You could help overcome misperceptions through your own sphere of influence, which ought to include the Internet.

Things to Avoid

Every disciple of Christ will be most effective and do the most good by adopting a demeanor worthy of a follower of the Savior. Discussions focused on questioning, debating, and doubting gospel principles do little to build the kingdom of God. The Apostle Paul has admonished us to not be “ashamed of the gospel of Christ: for it is the power of God unto salvation” (Romans 1:16). Let us all stand firmly and speak with faith in sharing our message with the world. Many of you are returned missionaries and can carry on a meaningful conversation in the language you learned on your mission. Your outreach can be international.

As you participate in this conversation and utilize the tools of new media, remember who you are—Latter-day Saints. Remember, as the proverb states, that “a soft answer turneth away wrath: but grievous words stir up anger” (Proverbs 15:1). And remember that contention is of the devil (see 3 Nephi 11:29). There is no need to argue or contend with others regarding our beliefs. There is no need to become defensive or belligerent. Our position is solid; the Church is true. We simply need to have a conversation, as friends in the same room would have, always guided by the prompting of the Spirit and constantly remembering the Atonement of the Lord Jesus Christ, which reminds us of how precious are the children of our Father in Heaven.

May the Lord bless each of you that you will have a powerful influence on those you come in contact with. As I said in the beginning, the power of words is incredible. Let your voice be heard in this great cause of the gospel of Jesus Christ.

Helps for Home Evening

As a family, watch the video clip of Elder M. Russell Ballard’s call for Latter-day Saints to share the message of the Restoration with others using the Internet. See www.youtube.com/LDSPublicAffairs. Discuss ways you can share your testimony of the gospel with others using the Internet.

Fill a large bowl or bathtub with water. Drop a bar of soap into the water, noticing the ripple effect of tiny waves generated from the soap falling into the water. Compare the waves to using the Internet to promote good, clean conversations about the Church. As a family, send an e-mail to a friend, telling something you love about the gospel.” Elder M. Russell Ballard

https://www.lds.org/study/ensign/2008/07/sharing-the-gospel-using-the-internet?lang=eng

Sherem Anti-Christ

“Sherem’s anti-Christ story in Chapter 7 of Jacob is reflective of exactly what is going on in the world today.  As Satan knows, it is his last hour to promote his atheistic agenda using these three false theories and any other deceitful way he can devise with the Internet as the propagation tool.  Without God, the world is trying to solve the world’s problems using science and technology, and most scientists believe the Bible to be a myth…

In contrast to Sherem and the atheists, who believe that we cannot know the future, which belief brings emptiness and fear into many hearts, we gratefully know much of the past, present, and future, because of God’s word – upon which this nation was founded.  Our faith in God gives us great hope and purpose to our lives.  As we are now seeing conspiring forces trying to destroy our liberty and encroach worldly values on all Christians.  As the prophecies tell us, we know that the pit they dig to destroy us will be the pit in which they will eventually fall.  And on the last day, they will confess with Sherem, that they were deceived by Satan, and will bow the knee in deep gratitude for the infinite atonement…

Both the Prophet Nephi and Joseph in Egypt prophesied that the Book of Mormon would come forth, and in that day when the Bible would be disbelieved, and the Book of Mormon and “other books” would come forth validating the Bible. (1 Ne. 13:39-41; 2 Ne. 3:11)  There is now information known so that those who desire can come to know God, which is eternal life (John 17:3) and the greatest gift from God (D&C 14:7). David W. Allan

The Question?

“Would you like to be a big part of the greatest challenge, the greatest cause, and the greatest work on the earth today?”

The Answer

On June 3, 2018, President Russell M. Nelson and his wife, Wendy W. Nelson, invited the youth to “enlist in the youth battalion of the Lord” and take part in “the greatest challenge, the greatest cause, and the greatest work on earth.”

And what is the greatest challenge? The gathering of Israel.

“My dear extraordinary youth, you were sent to earth at this precise time, the most crucial time in the history of the world, to help gather Israel,” the prophet said. “There is nothing happening on this earth right now that is more important than that. There is nothing of greater consequence. Absolutely nothing. This gathering should mean everything to you. This is the mission for which you were sent to earth.” President and Sister Nelson’s Devotional for Youth. A Call to Enlist and Gather Israel By Charlotte Larcabal Church Magazines

Sometimes when we hear about gathering Israel, we become confused on who that is? We hear the words, Judah, Jew, Israel, Gentile, Joseph, Lamanite, Shem, Tribe, etc. Who is who? How can I gather someone whom I don’t understand who it even is? Let me share with you answers to questions like, Who, then, are the Jews, What does the name Jew mean? Who is a Gentile? What does it mean that I am from the tribe of Ephraim or Manasseh? Who are the Lamanites? Are the Lamanites Jewish? Who are the Indians and where do they fit in? Who is Ham, Shem and Japeth? Who are the lost 10 tribes of Israel?

The Prophet wants us to gather Israel, so let’s discuss a little information about who is who. At the very end, our Prophet, Russell M. Nelson has a simple answer for us.

Who, then, are the Jews

“Who, then, are the Jews, and what part shall they yet play in the gathering of Israel and the return of their King? There is a maze of fuzzy thinking and shoddy scholarship, both in the world and in the Church, that seeks to identify the Jews, both ancient and modern, and to expound upon what they have believed and do believe. It is not strange that the divines of the day-not knowing that the kingdom is to be restored to Israel at that glorious day; not having the Book of Mormon and latter-day revelation to guide them-it is not strange that they come up with false and twisted views about the mission and destiny of the Jews. It is a little sad that church members sometimes partake of these false views and of this secular spirit so as to misread the signs of the times.   

What is a Jew?

The term Jew is a contraction of the name Judah, but the Jews are not the members of the tribe of Judah as such. After the reign of Solomon, the Lord’s people divided into the kingdom of Israel  and the kingdom of Judah. Nearly ten tribes served Jeroboam in Israel and two and a half tribes served Rehoboam in Judah. The Levites were scattered among all the tribes. Judah, Simeon, and part of Benjamin comprised the kingdom of Judah. In actual fact, and considering blood lineage only, both kingdoms had in them people from all of the tribes. Lehi, who lived in Judah and was a Jew, was of the tribe of Manasseh. The Jews were nationals of the kingdom of Judah without reference to tribal ancestry. Thus the descendants of Lehi, both the Nephites and the Lamanites, were Jews because they came out from Jerusalem and from the kingdom of Judah. (2 Ne. 33:8.)   

Who are the 10 Tribes?

The Jews today are also those whose origins stem back to the kingdom of their fathers. Clearly the dominant tribe-dominant, however, only in the sense of political power and rulership-was Judah. As to the bloodlines, who knows whether there are more of Judah or of Simeon or of Benjamin or of some other tribe among the Jews as we know them? Paul, a Jew, was of the tribe of Benjamin. The name Judea, now used as a noun, is actually an adjective meaning Jewish and is the Greek and Roman designation for the land of Judah.  

Who is a Gentile? 

Since the Ten Tribes were taken into Assyria and lost from the knowledge of their fellows more than a century before the Jews went into Babylonian captivity, the prophets began to speak of Jews and Gentiles and to consider as a Gentile everyone who was not a Jew. This classifies Ephraim and the rest of scattered Israel as Gentiles. Everyone, in this sense, who is not a Jew is a Gentile, a concept that will enable us, in due course, to set forth what is meant by the fulness of the Gentiles.” Titles Added (The Millennial Messiah: The Second Coming of the Son of Man, p.221-222)

The Midst of the Lamanites; Means?

“My father was living in a good hewed log house in 1840 when one morning as the family all sat at breakfast old Father Joseph Smith, the first Patriarch of the Church and father of the Prophet Joseph, came in and sat down by the fire place, after declining to take breakfast with us, and there he sat some little time in silence looking steadily in the fire. At length he observed that we had been driven from Missouri to this place; with some passing comments, he then asked this question: “And how long, Brother Huntington, do you think we will stay here?” As he asked this question I noticed a strange, good-natured expression creep over his whole being-an air of mysterious joy.

Father answered, after just a moment’s hesitation, “Well, Father Smith, I can’t begin to imagine.”

“No,” said the old Patriarch, his whole being seeming to be alive with animation. “The Lord has told Joseph that when we leave here we will goin to the Rocky Mountains; right into the midst of the Lamanites.”

“We will just stay here seven years,” he answered. “The Lord has told Joseph so-just seven years,” he repeated. “Now this is not to be made public; I would not like to have this word go any further,” said the Patriarch, who leaned and relied upon his son Joseph in all spiritual matters as much as boys generally do upon their parents for temporalities. There were then two or three minutes of perfect silence. The old gentleman with more apparent secret joy and caution in his countenance said, “And where do you think we will go to when we leave here, Brother Huntington?” Father did not pretend to guess; unless we went back to Jackson County.

Editors Note: Into the midst to me would mean, “to the very heart”, or “the middle of” or “into the Heatland of the United States”. As as I look at this today the area of the Heartland of America is where the Book of Mormon began, (the heart) and all around it are the remnants or outskirts, or the hinterlands as we call it. So there are Lamanites all around the heart of the land through marriage and inter mingling. Father Lehi would have distant relatives in South and Central America, but the heartland is where it all began.

Huntington continues, “This information filled our hearts with unspeakable joy, for we knew that the Book of Mormon and this gospel had been brought to light more for the remnants of Jacob upon this continent than for the Gentiles.

Father Smith again enjoined upon us profound secrecy in this matter and I don’t think it was ever uttered by one of Father Huntington’s family. The history of Nauvoo shows that we located in Nauvoo in 1839 and left it in 1846.

The Church did move to the Rocky Mountains into the midst of the Indians or Lamanites -or more properly speaking the Jews-and here expect to live until we move to the spirit land or the Lord moves us somewhere else.” Oliver B. Huntington, “Prophecy,” Young Woman’s Journal 2, no. 7 (April 1891): 314-15

Who are the Remnants of the House of Israel?

“I am asked to occupy the few minutes yet remaining: If the Spirit gives me liberty I will pursue the train of thought that has passed through my mind while Brother Richards has been speaking upon the spirit that has gone abroad upon the remnants of the house of Israel who occupy this land, the American Indians whom we understand to be the descendants of the Nephites, the Lamanites, the Lemuelites and the Ishmaelites who formerly possessed this land, whose fathers we have an account of in the Book of Mormon.” The Indians—The Influence of the Elders Among Them in the Interest of Peace, Etc. Discourse by Elder Erastus Snow, delivered at Logan, Sunday Afternoon, February 5th, 1882

Who is Shem?

Name. Son of Noah (Gen. 5:29–32; 6:10; 7:13; 8:16; 9:26; Moses 8:12); his descendants (Gen. 10:21–31; 11:10–32; 1 Chr. 1:17; Luke 3:36). Shem was the traditional ancestor of the Shemitic or Semitic races, a group of kindred nations, which includes the Arabs, the Hebrews and Phoenicians, the Arameans or Syrians, the Babylonians and Assyrians. The languages spoken by these various nations were closely related and were known as the Semitic languages. In latter-day revelation Shem is referred to as “the great high priest” (D&C 138:41). See also Melchizedek. Bible Dictionary

Noah had three sons Ham and Japeth, who were not the priesthood lineage and Shem who was the chosen lineage.

Lehi-Manasseh/Joseph
Daughters of Ismael-Ephraim/Joseph
Mulekites-Judah
You can see how the Nephites, Lamanites, Joseph, Manasseh, Ephraim and Judah (All from Shem) intermingles with each other.

Do you believe the Lamanites of the Book of Mormon are in fact of Jewish descent? I do! Why is this such an important idea? There are only 3 races of people on the earth today. We all come from Adam through the sons of Noah. Noah’s three sons are Ham, Shem and Japeth. (ONLY 3 RACES)

Japeth
The eldest son of Noah, an Old Testament prophet (Moses 8:12).
God shall enlarge Japheth, Gen. 9:27.
Ham
The government of Ham was patriarchal and was blessed as to things of the earth and wisdom but not as to the priesthood, Abr. 1:21–27.
Ham’s wife, Egyptus, was a descendant of Cain; the sons of their daughter Egyptus settled in Egypt, Abr. 1:23, 25 (Ps. 105:23; 106:21–22).
Shem
In the Old Testament, a righteous son of Noah and, according to tradition, the forefather of the Shemite, or Semite, peoples, including the Arabs, Hebrews, Babylonians, Syrians, Phoenicians, and Assyrians (Gen. 5:29–32; 6:10; 7:13; 9:26; 10:21–32; Moses 8:12). In latter-day revelation Shem is referred to as “the great high priest” (D&C 138:41).

Blog on Shem here:

Lamanites are Descendants of the Jews

We need to look no further than the scriptures to know the Lamanites ARE DESCENDANTS of the JEWS.

“And again, I command thee that thou shalt not covet thine own property, but impart it freely to the printing of the Book of Mormon, which contains the truth and the word of God—Which is my word to the Gentile, that soon it may go to the Jew, of whom the Lamanites are a remnant, that they may believe the gospel, and look not for a Messiah to come who has already come.” D&C 29:26-27  

“Which is my word to the Gentile, that soon it may go to the Jew, of whom the Lamanites are a remnant, that they may believe the gospel, and look not for a Messiah to come who has already come.” D&C 19:27   “And then shall the remnant of our seed know concerning us, how that we came out from Jerusalem, and that they are descendants of the Jews.” 2 Nephi 30:4

D&C 57:1 “Hearken, O ye elders of my church, saith the Lord your God, who have assembled yourselves together, according to my commandments, in this land, which is the land of Missouri, which is the land which I have appointed and consecrated for the gathering of the saints.

2 Wherefore, this is the land of promise, and the place for the city of Zion.

3 And thus saith the Lord your God, if you will receive wisdom here is wisdom. Behold, the place which is now called Independence is the center place; and a spot for the temple is lying westward, upon a lot which is not far from the courthouse.

4 Wherefore, it is wisdom that the land should be purchased by the saints, and also every tract lying westward, even unto the line running directly between Jew and Gentile;” D&C 57:1-4

At that time the Lamanites (or Jews) lived on the west and the Gentiles (or Whites) lived on the east. In this way you may interpret D&C 57:1-4 as separating the Jews and Gentiles or the Lamanites and Whites

Who is the House of Joseph?

“I would say to the Lamanites, if I could speak to them understandingly, that you are also a branch of the house of Israel, and chiefly of the house of Joseph, and your forefathers have fallen through the same examples of unbelief and sins, as have the Jews, and you, as their posterity, have wandered in sin and darkness for many generations; and you, like the Jews, have been driven and trampled under the foot of the Gentiles, [See chart below] and put to death through your wars with each other, and with the white man, until you are almost destroyed. But there is still a redemption and salvation for a remnant of you in the latter days. It is time for you to cease shedding each other’s blood or making war upon your fellow-man. Cease to destroy one another, learn to cultivate the earth, and raise your food therefrom; call upon the Great Spirit to protect you and deliver you from bondage and darkness, and the Great Spirit will hear you and deliver you, and a remnant of you will again become a delightsome people as your forefathers were when they kept the commandments of God.” Wilford Woodruff History of His Life and Labors AS RECORDED IN HIS DAILY JOURNALS  PREPARED FOR PUBLICATION BY MATTHIAS F. COWLEY Salt Lake City, Utah 1909 Blog here

Who are the Indians?

“The Book of Mormon is a record of the forefathers of our western tribes of Indians; having been found through the ministration of an holy angel, and translated into our own language by the gift and power of God, after having been hid up in the earth for the last fourteen hundred years, containing the word of God which was delivered unto them. By it we learn that our western tribes of Indians are descendants from that Joseph who was sold into Egypt, and that the land of America is a promised land unto them, and unto it all the tribes of Israel will come, with as many of the Gentiles as shall comply with the requisitions of the new covenant. TEACHINGS OF THE PROPHET JOSEPH SMITH Page 17:

Where is Zion?

The word Zion is used repeatedly in all the standard works of the Church and is defined in latter-day revelation as “the pure in heart” (D&C 97:21). Other usages of Zion have to do with a geographical location. For example, Enoch built a city that was called Zion (Moses 7:18–19); Solomon built his temple on Mount Zion (1 Kgs. 8:1; see also 2 Sam. 5:6–7); and Jackson County, Missouri, is called Zion in many of the revelations in the D&C, such as 58:49–50; 62:4; 63:48; 72:13; 84:76; 104:47. The city of New Jerusalem, to be built in Jackson County, Missouri, is to be called Zion (D&C 45:66–67). The revelations also speak of “the cause of Zion” (D&C 6:6; 11:6). In a wider sense all of North and South America are Zion (HC 6:318–19). For further references see 1 Chr. 11:5; Ps. 2:6; 99:2; 102:16; Isa. 1:27; 2:3; 4:3–5; 33:20; 52:1–8; 59:20; Jer. 3:14; 31:6; Joel 2; Amos 6:1; Obad. 1:17, 21; Heb. 12:22–24; Rev. 14:1–5; and many others. (In the New Testament, Zion is spelled Sion.) Bible Dictionary

Joseph Smith said Zion is in Independence Missouri

“You know there has been great discussion in relation to Zion–where it is, and where the gathering of the dispensation is, and which I am now going to tell you. The prophets have spoken and written upon it; but I will make a proclamation that will cover a broader ground. The whole of America is Zion itself from north to south, and is described by the Prophets, who declare that it is the Zion where the mountain of the Lord should be, and that it should be in the center of the land. When Elders shall take up and examine the old prophecies in the Bible, they will see it.  (Teachings of the Prophet Joseph Smith, Section Six 1843–44, p.362)

See my blog here for more information called, “CITY OF ZION AND THE NEW JERUSALEM IS ONE AND THE SAME” JOSEPH FIELDING SMITH

With a better knowledge of the Jews, Gentiles, Shem, Israel, Lamanites or Indians, we can better understand our Prophet’s words about the importance of gathering Israel. Who is Israel and how can I help gather them, to Zion, to Missouri, or how can I just help period?

The Answer Specifically?

President Russell M. Nelson declared, “Anytime you do anything that helps anyone—on either side of the veil—take a step toward making covenants with God and receiving their essential baptismal and temple ordinances, you are helping to gather Israel. It is as simple as that” (Russell M. Nelson, “Hope of Israel,” worldwide devotional for youth, June 3, 2018, churchofjesuschrist.org/broadcasts).

The main point of this entire blog is to bring attention to the awful way the 117th Congress of the United States is acting and how the Book of Mormon speaks specifically to their terrible acts. Congress is purposely confusing us and usurping their power. They have themselves in mind, and not us. We almost out voted them, 222 to 211, and hopefully in two years we can vote to bring back some sense to our government.

And I, the Lord God, spake unto Moses, saying: That Satan, whom thou hast commanded in the name of mine Only Begotten, is the same which was from the beginning, and he came before me, saying—Behold, here am I, send me, I will be thy son, and I will redeem all mankind, that one soul shall not be lost, and surely I will do it; wherefore give me thine honor. Moses 4:1

Satan and his minions want to force us to do evil and even evil that looks good. He wants all glory unto himself. One of the most difficult things for us to remember is that this world is really Satan’s world. The Lord’s world is to come. We are trying to be in this world without becoming part of this world. That is a huge challenge. Our love of money and power are destroying our nation. Our nation is $29 Trillion in debt. Horrendous.

Don’t Misuse Money

I love the saying in Jacob that says, “Think of your brethren like unto yourselves, and be familiar with all and free with your substance, that they may be rich like unto you. But before ye seek for riches, seek ye for the kingdom of God. And after ye have obtained a hope in Christ ye shall obtain riches, if ye seek them; and ye will seek them for the intent to ado good—to clothe the naked, and to feed the hungry, and to liberate the captive, and administer relief to the sick and the afflicted.” Jacob 2:17-19

Generation of Vipers

“Wo unto all those that discomfort my people, and drive, and murder, and testify against them, saith the Lord of Hosts; a generation of vipers shall not escape the damnation of hell. Behold, mine eyes see and know all their works, and I have in reserve a swift judgment in the season thereof, for them all; For there is a time appointed for every man, according as his works shall be”. D&C 121:23-2

I see our world more and more becoming a nation of vipers. I see our current government working evil, but we know their works will be known soon enough. We need to have faith and be patient.

“We have learned by sad experience that it is the nature and disposition of almost all men, as soon as they get a little authority, as they suppose, they will immediately begin to exercise unrighteous dominion. Hence many are called, but few are chosen”. D&C 121:39-40

Are we following the previous scripture in our own homes? Do we love our spouse and neighbor? I am afraid almost all politicians when they get a little power they exercise unrighteousness. Look how far we have tumbled since the beginning of 1776, or since 1844, or since 2001. We have been blessed with a constitution that has lasted almost 250 years. Can we maintain it?

It seems the majority of our government is officially saying, “All is well in Zion”. There is no fraud, we are the honorable of the earth. We dind’t steal this election, you just are wrong, is what they say.

“And others will he pacify, and lull them away into carnal security, that they will say: All is well in Zion; yea, Zion prospereth, all is well—and thus the devil cheateth their souls, and leadeth them away carefully down to hell.”

Little do they realize that Satan is leading our government and many of us carefully down to hell. Have we been lulled to sleep. May we wake up and heed the words of Pres. Benson below.

What can we do to save America?

“The Constitution of the United States has served as a model for many nations and is the oldest constitution in use today. “I established the Constitution of this land,” said the Lord, “by the hands of wise men whom I raised up unto this very purpose” (D&C 101:80). For centuries the Lord kept America hidden in the hollow of His hand until the time was right to unveil her for her destiny in the last days. “It is wisdom that this land should be kept as yet from the knowledge of other nations,” said Lehi, “for behold, many nations would overrun the land, that there would be no place for an inheritance” (2 Ne. 1:8)… Our Father in Heaven planned the coming forth of the Founding Fathers and their form of government as the necessary great prologue leading to the restoration of the gospel. Recall what our Savior Jesus Christ said nearly two thousand years ago when He visited this promised land: “For it is wisdom in the Father that they should be established in this land, and be set up as a free people by the power of the Father, that these things might come forth” (3 Ne. 21:4). America, the land of liberty, was to be the Lord’s latter-day base of operations for His restored church…

George Washington

During his first inaugural address in 1789, President George Washington, a man who was raised up by God, said: “No people can be bound to acknowledge and adore the invisible hand, which conducts the affairs of men, more than the people of the United States. Every step by which they have advanced to the character of an independent nation seems to have been distinguished by some token of providential agency” (First Inaugural Address, 30 Apr. 1789)…

Unfortunately, we as a nation have apostatized in various degrees from different Constitutional principles as proclaimed by the inspired founders. We are fast approaching that moment prophesied by Joseph Smith when he said: “Even this nation will be on the very verge of crumbling to pieces and tumbling to the ground, and when the Constitution is upon the brink of ruin, this people will be the staff upon which the nation shall lean, and they shall bear the Constitution away from the very verge of destruction” (19 July 1840, as recorded by Martha Jane Knowlton Coray; ms. in Church Historian’s Office, Salt Lake City)…

Only in this foreordained land, under its God-inspired Constitution and the resulting environment of freedom, was it possible to have established the restored church…

Two great American Christian civilizations—the Jaredites and the Nephites—were swept off this land because they did not “serve the God of the land, who is Jesus Christ” (Ether 2:12). What will become of our civilization?… I have faith that the Constitution will be saved as prophesied by Joseph Smith. It will be saved by the righteous citizens of this nation who love and cherish freedom. It will be saved by enlightened members of this Church—among others—men and women who understand and abide the principles of the Constitution.

I reverence the Constitution of the United States as a sacred document. To me its words are akin to the revelations of God, for God has placed His stamp of approval upon it.

I testify that the God of heaven sent some of His choicest spirits to lay the foundation of this government, and He has now sent other choice spirits to help preserve it.

We, the blessed beneficiaries of the Constitution, face difficult days in America, “a land which is choice above all other lands” (Ether 2:10)… Exra Taft Benson “Our Divine Constitution Ensign Oct 1987

Government Ignoring Gender

I will take a look at our 117th newly sworn in US Congress. I hear flattering words, hypocrites, congress acting as if they are His holy children, and I see many of our government is full of the arts of the devil. You will understand as you see Representative Cleaver invoke some unknown god in his prayer. You will hear words that have been removed from our vocabulary including the name of Father and Mother. It seems our congress wants us even more confused about who is a woman and who is a man all in the name of polical correctness.

Evil Good, and Good Evil

“Wo unto them that call evil good, and good evil, that put darkness for light, and light for darkness, that put bitter for sweet, and sweet for bitter!” 2 Nephi 15:20

Confusing Clothing

The woman shall not wear that which pertaineth unto a man, neither shall a man put on a woman’s garment: for all that do so are abomination unto the Lord thy God. Deut 22:5

Sexual Abnormalities

“Thou shalt not lie with mankind, as with womankind: it is abomination. Neither shalt thou lie with any beast to defile thyself therewith: neither shall any woman stand before a beast to lie down thereto: it is confusion. Lev 18:22-23

“Wherefore God also agave them up to uncleanness through the lusts of their own hearts, to dishonor their own bodies between themselves:

Who changed the truth of God into a lie, and worshipped and served the creature more than the Creator, who is blessed for ever. Amen.

For this cause God agave them up unto vile affections: for even their women did change the natural use into that which is against nature:

And likewise also the men, leaving the natural use of the woman, burned in their lust one toward another; men with men working that which is unseemly, and receiving in themselves that recompense of their error which was meet.

And even as they did not like to retain God in their knowledge, God gave them over to a reprobate mind, to do those things which are not convenient;

Being filled with all unrighteousness, fornication, wickedness, covetousness, maliciousness; full of envy, murder, debate, deceit, malignity; whisperers,

Backbiters, haters of God, despiteful, proud, boasters, inventors of evil things, disobedient to parents,

Without understanding, covenant breakers, without natural affection, implacable, unmerciful” Romans 1:24-31

Flattery Defined

• pleasing or gratifying.
• excessively or insincerely complimentary
• helping to enhance attractiveness
• to praise or compliment insincerely, effusively, or excessively:
• to represent favorably; gratify by falsification

Sherem and the 222 House Representatives

And now it came to pass after some years had passed away, there came a man among the people of Nephi, whose name was Sherem.

And it came to pass that he began to preach among the people, and to declare unto them that there should be no Christ. And he preached many things which were flattering unto the people; and this he did that he might overthrow the doctrine of Christ.” Jacob 7:1-2

“Yea, ye will lift him up, and ye will give unto him of your substance; ye will give unto him of your gold, and of your silver, and ye will clothe him with costly apparel; and because he speaketh flattering words unto you, and he saith that all is well, then ye will not find fault with him.

O ye wicked and ye perverse generation; ye hardened and ye stiffnecked people, how long will ye suppose that the Lord will suffer you? Yea, how long will ye suffer yourselves to be led by foolish and blind guides? Yea, how long will ye choose darkness rather than light?” Helaman 13:28-29

“Therefore he did flatter them, and also Kishkumen, that if they would place him in the judgment-seat he would grant unto those who belonged to his band that they should be placed in power and authority among the people; therefore Kishkumen sought to destroy Helaman.” Helaman 2:5

Hypocrites in Synagogues (See Video Below)

“Therefore, when ye shall do your alms do not sound a trumpet before you, as will hypocrites do in the synagogues and in the streets, that they may have glory of men. Verily I say unto you, they have their reward. Helaman 13:2

Yea, he sent a decree among them, that they should not lay their hands on them to bind them, or to cast them into prison; neither should they spit upon them, nor smite them, nor cast them out of their synagogues, nor scourge them; neither should they cast stones at them, but that they should have free access to their houses, and also their temples, and their sanctuaries. Alma 23:2

We are Thy Holy Children

“Holy God, we believe that thou hast separated us from our brethren; and we do not believe in the tradition of our brethren, which was handed down to them by the childishness of their fathers; but we believe that thou hast elected us to be thy holy children; and also thou hast made it known unto us that there shall be no Christ.” Alma 31:16

The new 117th US House of Representatives was just sworn in and Nancy Pelosi was voted in again as the House Leader. I think she is the nemesis of the Saints in the Latter-days. It will be alright however as the Lord has said, “And now, because ye are compelled to be humble blessed are ye; for a man sometimes, if he is compelled to be humble, seeketh repentance; and now surely, whosoever repenteth shall find mercy; and he that findeth mercy and endureth to the end the same shall be saved.” Alma 32:13

Zeezrom Expert in the Devices of the Devil

“And this Zeezrom began to question Amulek, saying: Will ye answer me a few questions which I shall ask you? Now Zeezrom was a man who was expert in the devices of the devil, that he might destroy that which was good; therefore,: Alma 11:2

Proposed House Rules Seek to Erase Gendered Terms Such as ‘Father, Mother, Son, Daughter’

BY MIMI NGUYEN LY January 1, 2021 Updated: January 2, 2021

Leaders in the House of Representatives announced on Friday a rules package for the 117th Congress that includes a proposal to use “gender-inclusive language” and eliminate gendered terms such as “‘father, mother, son, daughter,” and more.

Speaker Nancy Pelosi (D-Calif.) and Rules Committee Chairman James McGovern (D-Mass.) announced on Friday that the rules package includes changes that would “honor all gender identities by changing pronouns and familial relationships in the House rules to be gender neutral.”

A separate announcement from McGovern (pdf) said that the Democratic rules package will make “Changes [to] pronouns and familial relationships in the House rules to be gender neutral or removes references to gender, as appropriate, to ensure we are inclusive of all Members, Delegates, Resident Commissioners and their families—including those who are nonbinary.”

Terms to be struck from clause 8(c)(3) of rule XXIII, the House’s Code of Official Conduct, as outlined in the proposed rules (pdf), include “father, mother, son, daughter, brother, sister, uncle, aunt, first cousin, nephew, niece, husband, wife, father-in-law, mother-in-law, son-in-law, daughter-in-law, brother-in-law, sister-in-law, stepfather, stepmother, stepson, stepdaughter, stepbrother, stepsister, half brother, half sister, grandson, [and] granddaughter.”

Such terms would be replaced with “parent, child, sibling, parent’s sibling, first cousin, sibling’s child, spouse, parent-in-law, child-in-law, sibling-in-law, stepparent, stepchild, stepsibling, half-sibling, [and] grandchild.”

According to the proposed rules, “seamen” would be replaced with “seafarers,” and “Chairman” would be replaced with “Chair” in Rule X of the House.

Pelosi and McGovern said that the overall package “includes sweeping ethics reforms, increases accountability for the American people, and makes this House of Representatives the most inclusive in history.”

The rules package includes removing floor privileges from former Congress members who have been convicted of crimes related to their House service or election.

It would also make it “a violation of the Code of Official Conduct for a Member, officer, or employee of the House to disclose the identity of a whistleblower.”

It also establishes a new Select Committee on Economic Disparity and Fairness in Growth, to “investigate, study, make findings, and develop recommendations on policies, strategies, and innovations” to “[empower] American economic growth while ensuring that no one is left out or behind in the 21st Century Economy.”

The rules package will be introduced and voted on once the new Congress convenes.

https://www.theepochtimes.com/proposed-house-rules-seek-to-erase-gendered-terms-such-as-father-mother-son-daughter_3640653.html

Sexual Identity or Gender

In 2016, the Obama administration published an HHS rule interpreting “sex” to mean sexual identity or gender, which it defined as “one’s internal sense of gender, which may be male, female, neither, or a combination of male and female.”

Finding the rule was probably contrary to applicable civil rights law, the Religious Freedom Restoration Act, and the Administrative Procedure Act, a federal court preliminarily enjoined it at the end of 2016. The court finalized its judgment in October 2019, striking down the offending provisions of the rule. A second federal court concurred…

The new rule is “correct … because a government agency should not be a party to lying to patients,” Shupe told The Epoch Times.

“For example, I’m biologically male. … So everyone in the medical field should have been honest with me about that instead of playing along with the ruse that I was a female.”

“Will doctors turn patients away? Some will and some have always been doing so. It should be their right, especially in the religious freedom arena. No doctor should have to perform a surgery on a healthy person against their will to enable a sexual fetish or to pretend that it’s going to alleviate a mental health problem. A doctor creating a fake vagina for me is no different than asking a doctor to implant horns in my head so I can identify as a dragon.”

https://www.theepochtimes.com/hhs-rule-removes-nondiscrimination-protection-for-gender-identity_3388333.html

I would highly recommend “Epoch Times” as your daily newspaper source. Very timely, conservative and God fearing.

Cleaver concludes congressional prayer with ‘amen and awoman’

Rep. Emanuel Cleaver (D-Mo.) finished the first daily congressional prayer of the new session with the words “amen and awoman” on Sunday. 

He said, “And dare I ask, oh Lord, peace even in this chamber now and evermore,” Cleaver said while serving as guest House chaplain. “We ask it in the name of the monotheistic god, Brahma, and god known by many names by many different faiths. Amen and awoman.” 

Cleaver’s ending to the blessing received sharp criticism from some online, primarily among conservatives. TheHill.com

Amen is a latin word that means “truly”

What does Awoman mean? No such word. It’s made up.

Representative Cleaver Preaches from the Rameumpton
Hear it for yourself in the Video Below:

Who is “the monotheistic god, Brahma, and god known by many names?”

Brahma is the first god in the Hindu triumvirate, or trimurti. The triumvirate consists of three gods who are responsible for the creation, upkeep and destruction of the world. The other two gods are Vishnu and Shiva. … Brahma is the least worshipped god in Hinduism today

Brahma (Sanskrit: ब्रह्मा, IAST: Brahmā) is the creator god in Hinduism.[1] He is also known asVāgīśa (Lord of Speech), and the creator of the four Vedas, one from each of his mouths. Brahma is consort of Saraswati and he is the father (creator) of Four Kumaras, Narada, Daksha, Marichi and many more.[2][3] Brahma is synonymous with the Vedic god Prajapati,[4] he is also known as Vedanatha (god of Vedas), Jnaneshwara (god of Knowledge), Chaturmukha (having Four Faces) Svayambhu (self born), etc, as well as linked to Kama and Hiranyagarbha (the cosmic egg). Wikepedia

Monotheism

Monotheism is the belief in one god. A narrower definition of monotheism is the belief in the existence of only one god that created the world, is omnipotent, omnipresent and omniscient, and intervenes in the world.

Monotheism, belief in the existence of one god, or in the oneness of God. As such, it is distinguished from polytheism, the belief in the existence of many gods, from atheism, the belief that there is no god, and from agnosticism, the belief that the existence or nonexistence of a god or of gods is unknown or unknowable. Monotheism characterizes the traditions of Judaism, Christianity, and Islam, and elements of the belief are discernible in numerous other religions.

Monotheism and polytheism are often thought of in rather simple terms—e.g., as merely a numerical contrast between the one and the many. Britannica.com

“Woke” Culture

In Berkeley, CA, even construction sites are woke. Last month, the Berkeley City Council approved an ordinance to change the language in the city’s municipal code to be gender neutral. That’s not a manhole over there, it’s now a maintenance hole. And that policeman? They are a police officer. Speaking of “they;” the pronouns “they” and “them” will be used in place of gendered language, including when referencing a single individual. You think that vase was man-made? Wrong again—it was human-made. Unless of course it was machine-made. The changes, which were spearheaded by City Councilmember and UC Berkeley alum Rigel Robinson, passed with no objection—to no one’s surprise.

The elimination of sex and gender is a sign of confusion and Satan is the king of confusion. Don’t give into the “Woke” or “Cancel” culture.

Transfigured the Holy Word of God

“O ye wicked and perverse and stiffnecked people, why have ye built up churches unto yourselves to get gain? Why have ye transfigured the holy word of God, that ye might bring damnation upon your souls? Behold, look ye unto the revelations of God; for behold, the time cometh at that day when all these things must be fulfilled. Behold, the Lord hath shown unto me great and marvelous things concerning that which must shortly come, at that day when these things shall come forth among you.” Mormon 8:33-34

Before I speak about this new article from the SL Tribune about Richard Bushman, I want to share with you some import differences I see between the belief system of Brother Bushman and other Traditionalists. See my blog here for more detail about An Apologist. As I discuss things below I am not claiming to speak for any other member of M2C or Heartlander, and I am definitely not speaking on behalf of the Church of Jesus Christ of Latter-day Saints. I love the Lord and His Church and I am a lifelong member in good standing.

I define myself as a Traditional & Conservative Apologist as well as many of my Heartland geography friends would.

Traditional is an advocate of maintaining tradition, especially so as to resist change. A person who believes the old ways are best. Truth cannot be changed. God’s in charge not man as a generalization. Judgmental of unusual behavior.
Conservative is a person who is averse to change and holds traditional values. A person favoring free enterprise, private ownership, and socially traditional ideas and an adherence to God and His principles.
Apologist is a person who defends or supports something (such as a religion, cause, or organization) that is being criticized or attacked by other people.” A person who offers an argument in defense of something controversial. Both M2C and Heartlanders are Apologists.

Most believers on the Mesoamerican two Cumorah Theory (M2C) belief of geography, I would say are Liberal, & Progressive Apologists.

Liberal a supporter of a political and social philosophy that promotes individual rights, civil liberties, democracy, and free enterprise. One who is open-minded or not strict in the observance of orthodox, traditional, or established forms or ways. Man’s more in charge not God, as a generalization. Less judgmental of norms.
Progressive a supporter of policies that are socially progressive and promote social welfare. Favoring or implementing social reform or new, liberal ideas. Developing gradually or in stages; proceeding step by step until traditional values become more liberal or progressive.

Difficult Questions and Answers

Most Heartlanders are Conservative or believe in the Traditional history of the Church. Most in the M2C camp are more Liberal or Intellectual and believe in the Revisionist history of the Church. Most Traditional Mormons would answer questions about sensitive issues similar to me as follows:

DNA- We believe there may be Hebrew DNA in many Native American Indians near the Great Lakes of the Algonquian and Iroquois tribes. Only Asian DNA has been found amongst the people of South, and Central America and amongst other Western Native Americans of the United States and Alaska. We believe most of those living in the South Pacific Islands are of Israelite blood, but we haven’t found DNA yet. M2C believe the Asian DNA found in Central America is because the Asian population over took any Hebrew DNA that may have existed as during the time of Lehi.
Evolution: We do not believe a cat could evolve into a dog and we don’t believe an ape can evolve into Man. We do believe in Evolution defined as change or adaptation within a species. Most intellectuals believe we evolved from an ape and change can happen outside of a species.
Translation of the Gold Plates: We believe they were translated by the power of God with Joseph using the breastplate and two clear stones in a silver bow (Like spectacles) that were found in the same hill as the plates. Most M2C followers believe the stone in the hat method of translation (SITH). They believe Joseph Smith never looked at the gold plates to translate.
Seer Stones: We believe Joseph had several seer stones that were used for faithful things by Joseph, but Joseph did not use a seer stone in his hat to translate the the Book of Mormon. If he did use this method, he would be just reading words from a seer stone that someone gave him to be written down so he wouldn’t have “translated” the places but just would have dictated the words to Oliver. Joseph also used the Urim and Thummim to translate parts of the Doctrine and Covenants.
Politics- We are mostly very conservative, love the US Constitution and our Founding Fathers. We believe in the right to bear arms and freedom of speech. Most of us don’t agree with many of the politics of fellow Mormon Mitt Romney and we love the great freedoms that Trump has given us. We also love Benjamin Netanyahu and how he has served our brothers and sisters in Israel. We don’t approve of the socialized version of government. We don’t agree with Socialism, Marxism, Communism, or Progressivism. We believe rights can only come from God not from Government.
Polygamy: We believe Joseph Smith and Brigham Young were following the commandments to practice polygamy just as Abraham and others were instructed. Satan just uses this highly controversial idea to get us to doubt things. Only about 3% of the entire church ever practiced polygamy. We believe when the Lord commands us, we should listen. Spiritual marriage is a higher law of God and has nothing to do with a physical relationship.
Science: We believe the dinosaurs lived during the Old Testament with Adam and were killed during the great world wide flood. We also believe that rocks were created during the flood which was an event that happened at about 2345 BC. Most Intellectuals believe the dinosaurs are millions of years old. We believe Noah’s worldwide flood was real. Many M2C think it may have been a myth. We have shown in a laboratory that wood can be fossilized in 2 days not in millions of years. (See Universal Model by Dean Sessions).
Creationism: We believe Adam was the first man and Eve the first woman placed on this earth around 4,000 BC and the earth is only about 12,000 years old, but the material of the earth is billions of years old as matter cannot be created but has existed forever. Most intellectuals believe the earth is 4.5 billion years old as the consensus on google says. They also believe in cave men and men on earth before Adam.
Testimony
Most of the M2C theory are just as valiant as Heartlanders are in the Church and they are both trying to help others as good members of this Church. We just have different beliefs in some matters. Both sides should strive to love one another.

The Church of Jesus Christ of Latter-day Saints is neutral when it comes to Book of Mormon Geography and many of the other subjects from my above list.

M2C Apologists: They say they are neutral and open to hearing about other geographical theories of the Book of Mormon. I don’t believe they are neutral. The may vaguely listen to others, but they are staunch in the Mesoamerican belief. I believe they say they are neutral to stay in a supportive role with the Church.

John L. Sorenson a leader of the Mesoamerican Theory said, “There remain Latter-day Saints who insist that the final destruction of the Nephites took place in New York, but any such idea is manifestly absurd. Hundreds of thousands of Nephites traipsing across the Mississippi Valley to New York, pursued (why?) by hundreds of thousands of Lamanites, is a scenario worthy only of a witless sci-fi movie, not of history.” John L. Sorenson, Mormon’s Codex (Deseret Book, 2013), p. 688.

Heartland Apologists: We love and support The Church of Jesus Christ of Latter-day Saints and we are mostly life long members in good standing. We are not neutral in our opinions about Book of Mormon Geography. We believe Book of Mormon events happened in the heartland of North America. The Book of Mormon is only a small percent of history and through marriage and migration we acknowledge there are other Lamanites that live outside of this Heartland, not spoken of in the Book of Mormon, including in the western United States, Canada and Central and South America.

My Blog about both competing theories is here:

Bias Confirmation

“Bias confirmation is not inherently good or bad. It’s a core part of our psychology. It helps us navigate an uncertain and unpredictable world. We confirm our biases daily in innumerable ways. If your bias makes you happy and productive, great. But there’s always a risk that the bias we’re confirming is based on a mistake.

The big mistake here is the assumption that Rough Stone Rolling is actual history. It’s not. It presents merely an abridgment of one version of history. Like every other book, it relates some facts and omits others. It suggests some conclusions and omits others. It’s not good or bad. It’s a tool. It’s one of many windows into actual history.

I always say people can believe whatever they want. It doesn’t matter to me what you believe. I just encourage people to pursue the truth and make informed decisions.” Jonathan Neville Here

Stoddard’s About Bushman 

FAITH CRISIS: Did the LDS Church Lie? (Part 1 ) We Were NOT Betrayed! By James and Hannah Stoddard  “A Reconstructed Narrative” 

Many remain unaware of the growing movement among disaffected members and disgruntled academic scholars within the Church to change our history. While the effort to progressively alter the traditional history is not a new phenomenon, the last few years have produced a sharp increase in the number of prominent Latter-day Saint historians and intellectual scholars who are calling for a ‘reconstructed narrative.’ 

One of those leading that charge is Richard L. Bushman, a prominent, progressive, New Mormon Historian whom some consider the “world’s foremost scholar on Joseph Smith and early Mormonism.” During a July 12, 2016 fireside, Bushman responded to a participant’s question regarding whether the traditional understanding of Church history is accurate: 

Question: In your view do you see room in Mormonism for several narratives of a religious experience or do you think that in order for the Church to remain strong they would have to hold to that dominant narrative? 

Richard Bushman: I think that for the Church to remain strong it has to reconstruct its narrative. The dominant narrative is not true; it can’t be sustained. The Church has to absorb all this new information or it will be on very shaky grounds and that’s what it is trying to do and it will be a strain for a lot of people, older people especially. But I think it has to change.  

The following month, Bushman elaborated on his meaning in connection with a new reconstructed narrative by making the with the following statement: 

I consider Rough Stone Rolling a reconstructed narrative.  It was shocking to some people.  They could not bear to have the old story disrupted in any way.  What I was getting at in the quoted passage is that we must be willing to modify the account according to newly authenticated facts.  If we don’t we will weaken our position.  Unfortunately, not everyone can adjust to this new material.  Many think they were deceived and the church was lying.  That is not a fair judgment in my opinion.  The whole church, from top to bottom, has had to adjust to the findings of our historians.  We are all having to reconstruct. 

Bushman is not alone in calling for a new Joseph Smith, and a new Church history with an accompanying newly-crafted Mormon culture. Throughout this and later volumes chapters we will hear from historians who are encouraging a “new era,” and who hope to shift the general consciousness of the Church toward one of ‘intellectual enlightenment.’ One professor scholar even went so far as to call for the “foundation” to be torn down and completely rebuilt. 

According to Bushman, from the most-recently baptized member, to multi-generational Latter-day Saints born and raised in the Church—all the way to the hierarchy—large numbers many are turning to the historians who are eagerly altering the foundational fundamental restoration story, based on their new ‘enlightened’ own interpretation. In the progressive mind their minds, Latter-day Saints have been fed a fictitious fallacious account of their  Mormon origins, but all now need to adapt their antiquate down understanding ideas to match the positions of these broad-minded progressive historians. For Bushman and his eager proselytes, the old story was inaccurate, and—at best—a feel-good myth; or—at worst it was a deliberate deceit, at its worst. Apparently, everyone was fooled except a few the New Mormon Historians, who have now solved the puzzle. 

Who is this new ‘Joseph Smith,’ and what constitutes a “reconstructed narrative”?  For those who are unaware, Bushman’s book, Rough Stone Rolling, presents a Joseph Smith who differs dramatically from the Joseph Smith advocated spoken of by past leaders, teachers and scholars in Presidents of the Church.  In contrast according to Rough Stone Rolling: 

• Joseph Smith was “involved in magic” (p 53). 
• Joseph Smith’s involvement in “magic . . . was a preparatory gospel” (p 53) and “[r]emnants of the magical culture stayed with him to the end” (p 51). 
• Joseph Smith gave “angry responses,” and “lashed back.” (pp 295-296). 
• Joseph Smith had “easily bruised pride.“ He was “unable to bear criticism” and “rebuked anyone who challenged him” (p 296). 
• Joseph Smith suffered from “treasure-seeking greed” (p 51). 
• The Smith family has been “diagnosed as a dysfunctional family that produced a psychologically crippled son” (p 55). 
• The Smith family was drawn to “treasure-seeking folklore,” and saw astrology and magical “formulas and rituals” as connected to their spiritual well-being (pp 50-51). 
• “Magic and religion melded in Smith family culture” (p 51). 
• Consecration “never worked properly. . . . The system’s two-year existence was about average for the various communal experiments being undertaken in the period” (p 183). 
• Joseph Smith Sr. was an “oft-defeated, unmoored father” (pp 26-27) who “partially abdicated family leadership” (p 42).   
• Joseph Smith Sr.’s “life [was] blighted by shame” (p 42). 
• “Was Joseph Smith an adulterer? . . . Had Joseph been involved in an illicit affair?” (p 323) 
• Joseph Smith’s “boasting” made his personal secretary “a little uncomfortable” (p 484). Joseph would “cut loose with extravagant comments about his mastery” (p 484). 
• Joseph Smith had “outrageous confidence” for attempting the Joseph Smith Translation (JST) of the Bible (p 132). 
• “Treasure seeking taught Joseph to look for the unseen in a stone” (p 131).  
• Joseph “from time to time drank too much” (p 43). 
• Joseph “probably exaggerated” the persecution after relating his First Vision. (p 43) 
• Joseph Smith had “[n]o flashes of intelligence, ambition, or faith distinguish him” (p 143).  
• Joseph Smith “was not the luminous figure he is sometimes made out to be. . . . His own person was effaced” (p 112). 

Bushman admitted that the proposed ‘reconstructed narrative’ of Latter-day Saint Church History, as well as the life and character of the Prophet Joseph Smith  clearly departed from the traditional or “dominant narrative” given to us by previous past Church historians, including Willard Richards, who was present at the Carthage martyrdom, George A. Smith, first cousin to the Prophet Joseph Smith, and Presidents Wilford Woodruff and Joseph Fielding Smith.   

Is The Dominant Narrative True? 

Is the dominant narrative true? To answer this question, we must first define what it is that represents the dominant narrative. For nearly two centuries, the Church maintained a consistent message about its foundational events; that God directed Joseph Smith as His Prophet to restore His truth, and to organize the Church according to the pattern of His primitive Church. Furthermore, that account characterizes the Prophet Joseph Smith as a righteous man who built the Church based on literal revelations received directly from God; that actual angels appeared, and the members witnessed the manifestation of authentic miracles. Additionally, God restored His priesthood through Joseph Smith, the restorer and Head of this dispensation, who stands next to the Son of God in righteousness and holiness as a pure and holy vessel. 

Subsequent to the sealing of the Prophet Joseph Smith’s testimony with his blood—at the Martyrdom where he fell with his noble brother, Hyrum—Brigham Young, who called himself “Joseph’s apostle,” continued to promote the teachings of the Prophet Joseph Smith, and to orchestrate his vision. Succeeding leaders and faithful members earnestly strive to carry on the Prophet Joseph’s work, testifying of and echoing his teachings in their lives, and to the world. 

Traditionalists believe the points of the foregoing represent the essence—the dominant narrative—of the Restoration event, and that true history and credible sources corroborate the particulars of this account. The evidence, and the historical witnesses, stand in full support of the Church’s and Joseph Smith’s accounts. Progressives disagree adamantly, arguing that the dominant narrative of the Church is “not true,” and believing that an immense cover-up has occurred—that when acknowledged, will allow a full-scale reconstruction of the story. The Angel Moroni told Joseph Smith that his name would be “had for good and evil,” so it is perhaps fitting that the struggle continues, both on the world’s stage and in the homes of the members of the Church. Time will vindicate the truthfulness of the record; that there was no cover-up, and that the true greatness of Joseph Smith is not less—but rather far greater—than what we might have imagined.  

Nevertheless, the Church is a temporal organization of imperfect human beings who strive, with varying degrees of success, to follow God’s will. Along the way, there have been some issues and historical complexities in which Presidents of the Church and other General Authorities acted in less-than-straight-forward ways. There have been times when the Lord required Presidents to act on His direction, and there may have been other times when Presidents acted according to the best light and knowledge they had, and were doing their best. 

Examples of where the Church leaders were perhaps less than one hundred percent straight-forward might include Joseph Smith’s carefully-worded denials of plural marriage in Nauvoo. This can be understood in considering that the Lord had commanded the practice of plural marriage in opposition to the laws of the land, necessitating that its practice be out of the public eye. Another example might be the continuance of post-1890 Manifesto polygamy. The Church publicly discontinued the practice of plural marriage with the issuance of the Manifesto (Official Declaration 1), but plural marriages were afterwards performed with the sanction of the President of the Church for some years. We do hold that the Presidents of the Church did not commit any dishonourable actions or decisions contrary to the will of God. This becomes clear once one understands the true history. However, the history and further exploration into these subjects exceeds the purpose of this work; they must fall under the pen of a future volume.  

In addition to these highly-poised issues, Presidents of the Church—especially during the administrations of David O. McKay and Spencer W. Kimball—and even more so during recent times, have paid careful attention to the message available to the media; and so far as is possible, have portrayed the Church in its best-possible light according to public opinion and perception. All businesses and organizations are acutely aware of this necessity today. Is every decision made by leaders altogether inspired? Such answers are far too difficult for us to know individually, but the responsibility stands rightfully between the Lord and the leaders of the Church. We believe, at least generally, that these decisions have been made in righteousness.  

However, historical nuances and the analogue of human imperfection are not the focus of this book; nor, we would suggest, are they the source of the ‘trust gap,’ the sense of lost moorings, felt by so many of today’s Latter-day Saints. At the end of the day, one question nagging thousands of Latter-day Saints can be summarized thus: “Is the dominant, traditional narrative true?” One might further ask, “Did the founding of the Church originate as presented by Joseph Smith and his companions who affirmed his narrative, or are there skeletons in the closet?” Progressives claim the Church covered up its history for nearly 200 years, but the student of truth must ask, is the current faith crisis the result of unmasked history . . . or of new interpretations? 

The authors believe that the dominant narrative is not only true, but in many respects has been understated. The Restoration of the Gospel of Jesus Christ, and the work of Joseph Smith and those loyal to his mission, is greater than we as a people might understand. It is the sincere belief of the authors that the nobility and greatness of Joseph Smith surpasses the glory that even his most ardent supporters concede.   

Unbeknownst to the general Church membership, the 20th century would witness an organized effort to rewrite Latter-day Saint history from within its own ranks. In a head-to-head, behind-the-scenes-battle, traditional leaders resisted intellectual progressives working in the Church History Department and at BYU, who claimed some forty years ago that it would take a generation to re-educate the Church membership. Where are we in this attempted re-education? What is the New Mormon History, and how does it personally affect you and your family?  

Join us as we explore newly-available diaries, review old books, and bring untold history into the light!  

Leonard Arrington told the Church History Division staff in 1976 that it would “take a generation to educate the Church to historical trends.’” Leonard J. Arrington Diaries, September 23, 1976; Leonard J. Arrington and Gary James Bergera, Confessions of a Mormon Historian: The Diaries of Leonard J. Arrington, 1971-1997, vol. 2 (Salt Lake City: Signature Books, 2018), 243, footnote 46. 

Biblical Criticism has led many scholars to determine that the Creation, the story of Adam and Eve, Noah’s worldwide Flood, the account of Jonah and the whale, Moses’ Exodus, and other miraculous events, are merely fictional stories with an allegorical purpose. Where did they come from? Some advocates of Biblical Criticism maintain that many were borrowed from Babylonian and Canaanite pagan myths.” James and Hanna Stoddard

Neville about Bushman

“The article in the SLTribune was an interview with Richard Bushman, the author of Rough Stone Rolling. (see below)

People often ask me about Brother Bushman. I’ve met him, spoken with him briefly a few times, and I think he’s awesome. He’s brilliant, friendly, personable, thoughtful. He’s an excellent historian, of course. I respect his work. But… he’s a historian.

If you’re not already familiar with the term “talent stack,” you should learn about it. Everyone develops different combinations of talents. We have natural interests and aptitudes. We get an education. We gain experience and expertise. We pursue our interests and develop our skills. The sum of all that is our talent stack.

Our talent stacks are part of our filters on the world. Our brains only process what our filters allow to pass through. Some of that is perceptual–what we see, touch, smell, hear, etc.–and part of that is mental or psychological–what confirms our biases, mostly.

For example, our M2C scholars say they “cannot unsee” Mesoamerica when they read the Book of Mormon. Their talent stack–Mesoamerican anthropology, archaeology, etc., combined with an M2C interpretation of the Book of Mormon–literally filters out information and explanations that contradict their M2C beliefs. That’s why they create this incestuous citation cartel and engage in peer approval instead of peer review. It’s all about bias confirmation, but to them, their beliefs are reality and everyone else is wrong. They think they’re doing a favor to Latter-day Saints by “protecting” them from impossible ideas such as the idea that the prophets were correct about the New York Cumorah.

It’s the same with the dominant LDS historians. They have convinced themselves that Joseph Smith didn’t use the plates, that he didn’t really translate anything, and that he merely read words off a seer stone in the hat (SITH). 

Why?

Because they’re historians. Their talent stack involves finding, uncovering, and preserving historical evidence (mainly documents). They consider the context and weigh the credibility of the evidence and reach conclusions. They think they are striving to be “objective” and get at the truth.

But historians are people, subject like everyone else to bias confirmation. Once they reach a conclusion, they profess skepticism or “caution” about documents that contradict their conclusions. They’ll redefine terms to suit their conclusions. They’ll omit inconvenient evidence, etc. For a prime example, notice how the Saints book, volume 1, censored Cumorah from the historical record.

Another good example is the “Early Modern English” theory promoted by Royal Skousen and Stanford Carmack. They’re linguists. Plus, they’re members of the citation cartels. Here is an excerpt from Brother Skousen’s book on the King James quotations in the Book of Mormon: ““The Book of Mormon is a creative and cultural translation of what was on the plates, not a literal one. Based on the linguistic evidence, the translation must have involved serious intervention from the English-language translator, who was not Joseph Smith.” I’ve discussed before the inherent weakness of intellectuals; they are blind to their own blindness. That’s why, when you read the work of LDS historians and other intellectuals, you can trust, but you better verify. (I wouldn’t even say trust, but that’s how the saying goes. I’d say you can “consider, but verify.” Jonathan Neville Here

Salt Lake Tribune about Bushman

(Photo courtesy of Richard Bushman) Latter-day Saint scholar Richard Bushman. By Peggy Fletcher Stack  | Dec. 31, 2020, 10:11 a.m.| Updated: 2:06 p.m.

Nearing his 90th birthday, Richard Lyman Bushman is the godfather, or, should we say, the patriarch of Mormon history. As an emeritus history professor at Columbia University, with a chair of Mormon studies named in his honor at the University of Virginia, and the author of “Rough Stone Rolling,” the much-heralded biography of church founder Joseph Smith, Bushman is revered as a gentle, thoughtful scholar, who explores the past and present of The Church of Jesus Christ of Latter-day Saints with an evenhanded but deft touch. He is married to the inimitable Claudia Lauper Bushman, also an American historian, scholar, and writer who helped found Exponent II, a feminist magazine for Latter-day Saint women. The couple have six children.

Bushman also has been a bishop and stake (regional) president, lay positions of leadership in the Utah-based faith, using his skills to lead and minister congregations of believers.

This far-ranging December interview was edited for clarity and length.

Was your childhood home a bookish environment? Did your parents value intellectual pursuits?

Well, no, it really wasn’t. It was a good, faithful Latter-day Saint home [in Portland, Ore.]. My father was in advertising and was an artist. My mother was a faithful, truly believing Latter-day Saint. They always had an appreciation for the idea of culture, that it was a good thing to do music and go to museums and that sort of thing. But they rarely did it … and I was never aware of my mother or my father reading books. They probably did, but it just didn’t register on me.

So when did you develop this interest in Mormon history or history itself?

The question is: When did I feel that I needed to think about the world to understand it? That started in high school, when I would ponder and write in my journal and try to figure things out. It was just thinking about the meaning of life and how you could be a good person and what was important, why people developed different kinds of social ranks…When I went to college [at Harvard], I started in physics, and then migrated to math. It wasn’t until the middle of my sophomore year that I moved towards history. And it really wasn’t particularly Mormon history, though I did write my undergraduate honors thesis on the expulsion from Jackson County, Missouri, titled “Saints Fled.” When I got to graduate school and was doing history, I was not particularly focused on Mormon history at all. My dissertation was not on a Mormon topic, and it really wasn’t until Leonard Arrington got me involved in the 1970s that I began doing much Mormon history.

Did you ever have any religious rights? When did you get your testimony of the church?

That sounds like if you have a testimony, you can’t have doubts and issues, but that’s a poor way of looking at it. Here’s what happened. I’m at Harvard. I have a lot of good friends in the church. We meet every Sunday. We’re all talk-talk-talk guys. We’re dealing with everything under the sun. My problem is not Joseph Smith or history. My problem is God. Is there enough evidence to believe in God? I was drawn towards agnosticism, where you cannot say one way or another if there’s a God. That all began to happen in the middle of my sophomore year. And that was a little embarrassing because I had been interviewed for a [church] mission in December that year. I went back to school and lost my faith in God and at the same time got a call to the New England Mission, right back where I had been as a student. I told the stake president when he set me apart, you know, “I’m not sure that I believe in God.” And he said, “That’s all right.” When I arrived in Cambridge (Mass.), the mission president, a professor of agriculture from Utah State [University] and so wise, asked, “Do you have a testimony?” I said, “No, I’m not sure I believe in God.” But he didn’t send me home. He said, “Would you read this book and tell me what you think of it?” He handed me a Book of Mormon and sent me on the train to Halifax, which took 20 hours to get there from Boston. I spent the next three months asking every question I could about the Book of Mormon witnesses — Were they deceived? Were they hypnotized? Were they in on the game? After that three months, the mission president came up and asked us to bear our testimonies and, when he came to me, I just said, “I know the Book of Mormon is right.” I was prepared to commit myself, which I did, and never wavered from that. But I have had continual questions ever since. They’ve never gone away.

What did you mean by, the Book of Mormon was “right”?

I don’t know what I meant by that. It was just the word that came to me rather than “true.” When I read the book, I believed those things were happening. I could picture them happening. They seemed very real to me. So I’ve just always said it was right. I have a little difficulty with the word “true.” I am willing to say it’s true for me and it is something I’m willing to grasp. But it’s not something I can persuade everyone, including Harvard professors, to believe in.

(Photo courtesy of Richard Bushman) Claudia and Richard Bushman dance at their San Francisco wedding reception in April 1955.

How do you define truth?

We have a very confined notion of truth that’s really defined for us by science, which requires evidence or proof to be accepted. In ancient times, truth was connected to goodness — truth was what led you to a good life. And, for me, that’s always been more important. I’ve always valued the truth that led me to the right kind of life, the one which makes me a good father and husband and prompts me to help people be good. With that kind of truth, I’m very much willing to say, I know the gospel is true.

Have you changed your mind over the years about any of the church’s founding events?

In terms of the particulars — the overall story about the First Vision, gold plates, translation and a set of revelations to form a church — my view remains pretty much the way it was. But I do think about some things differently. The Book of Mormon is a problem right now. It’s so baffling to so many that Joseph was not even looking at the gold plates [to translate them]. And there’s so much in the Book of Mormon that comes out of the 19th century that there’s a question of whether or not the text is an exact transcription of Nephi’s and Mormon’s words, or if it has been reshaped by inspiration to be more suitable for us, a kind of an expansion or elucidation of the Nephite record for our times. I have no idea how that might have worked or whether that’s true. But there are just too many scholars now, faithful church scholars, who find 19th-century material in that text. That remains a little bit of a mystery, just how it came to be.

But you stand by your view that there were physical gold plates, right?

Yes, I am developing the idea that there are objects that prompt revelation. Objects like the gold plates, the seer stone or Egyptian manuscripts were instrumental, important and significant [in the translation or revelation process], but used differently from the way we would use an object to translate the writings of Augustine, for example.

You are completing a book about the plates, which Smith claimed to have but then returned to an angel. What is your fascination with them?

All they are is an imaginary object. We can’t see them or touch them, but they’re in our heads. Gold plates figure in the imagination of modern Mormons and especially educated Mormons. They’re one of our great fantasies, one of the most fabulous and unbelievable parts of our history. I am really curious about how today’s Latter-day Saints feel about them. If Joseph Smith had kept them, they would have just become another artifact, and he would be like the Bedouin shepherds who found the Dead Sea Scrolls, minor characters in a great archaeological discovery.

How do you — as a person who once studied physics and math — explain the kind of mystical experiences claimed by Smith and his followers, the witnesses, and those who attended the dedication of the Kirtland Temple?

The kind of faith that early Mormons used to have or the kind of experiences that various peoples around the Earth have, where visions and powerful things come to them, are sort of shut down by our insistence on what we call “rational.” I want to leave room for the mystical — not that I necessarily accept everything every mystic says — but I want to be very tolerant of that mode of apprehending world. When people report those experiences, I believe they have to be taken seriously as part of the human experience. It’s like saying, “I’m not going to listen to music or to let myself be moved by romantic feelings.” You’re cutting off part of yourself and your life if you say that’s just beyond human capacity.

Do you think that openness helps you capture the past better?

I have come to believe you should always treat the people that you write about with the same respect you would show them if you knew them in person. That is, you must honor the way they think of themselves. Your first responsibility is to re-create their life as they lived and experienced it, not to judge it. I once told a graduate student that I always felt I had to respect people because they may be dead now, but I might meet them in the hereafter. And I was embarrassed because at my farewell party when I retired from Columbia, she told that story to the whole faculty.

(Rick Egan | Tribune file photo) Historian Richard Bushman gives a talk at Benchmark Books in Salt Lake City in 2018.

You can have respect but don’t you always have to report their flaws as well, like Brigham Young and his views on race?

My heart goes out to Brigham Young right now. He’s becoming the fall guy [for the church’s former racist priesthood-temple ban.] We really need someone to go through his biography and treat the latter half of his life empathetically. But on race, he really was off base. There seemed to be not just a sad acknowledgment of the limitations of African Americans in the church, but sort of a vindictive quality to him. And he spoke with some force. We just have to say he was wrong. But it’s not our job to condemn him or to say, therefore, we’re canceling him, that he’s worthless. We have to keep it all in perspective.

How have you seen the church evolve over the decades on race, feminism or LGBTQ issues?

I subsume this category into what I call cosmopolitanism, which is one of the most powerful influences in the church right now. By cosmopolitanism, I mean that we’re suddenly able to see ourselves as others see us and we can picture ourselves as one religion among a number of religions and a number of viewpoints. We can see how Mormonism looks from a global view. And as soon as we do that, then the way we treat women becomes problematic in terms of the way the educated world in general is looking upon women and race and LGBTQ issues and so on. We have to find ways of couching our message so that it makes sense to the world at large. At the same time, we need to hold onto our roots in a parochial way. I mean that in a positive sense. We all, even the most cosmopolitan people, need a home base in Mormonism. We’ll keep trying to find words that will allow us to express what we believe in a way that’s acceptable. We want to sound like we’re reasonable souls. I see the merits of that. But that relieves us of the responsibility of defending the things that are uniquely ours — like angels and gold plates — that should be protected.

Do you see the church changing as it moves into new countries?

Of course it’s going to change. The question is: What is doctrine and what is practice? What are the essentials we have to hold onto at all costs? We speak as if essential doctrines are clearly defined and that they will never change, but we can never say what they truly are. We say we believe God and faith are the basis of a good life, but it is always going to be remolded and reshaped. We just have to live with that. In the end, it can be very therapeutic and strengthening if you have to think through what you really believe, what you could stand up for, what you would speak about at the United Nations or to a group of the Harvard faculty. Then you’ve got something you could really hold onto. If your faith is only good in Salt Lake City, but it doesn’t work in London, then you don’t really have a viable faith.

How do you understand the reverence for Latter-day Saint prophets?

If it leads to the idea that prophets never make a mistake, even basic ones, that’s going to get us in trouble. Brigham did make a mistake on race, and saying he didn’t just gets us in more trouble. It’s better to say they do make mistakes like anyone else. But it’s of great importance for us to believe that God is leading us. And that begins with believing God is leading the church, that God is with the church. That makes possible the Mormon miracles — the fact that we work together so well, that we go along with our bishop, even when we don’t like the way he does things. It leads to our unity, our community, our strength. The idea of revelation permeates everything we do. We can’t let go of that.

(Rick Egan | Tribune file photos) Richard and Claudia Bushman in 2018.

Why have you turned to art, helping to launch the Center for Latter-day Saint Arts in New York?

Art is a form of expression, it’s presenting who we are. In my lifetime, I’ve seen Mormon history move from an organized group of a handful of scholars trying to approach the subject but really not being trusted entirely. The “true” Mormon history, the one that was believed academically, was done by non-Mormons. Now, Mormons not only write the history that’s accepted as the “true” history, but those outside the church who write about it have to satisfy Mormon scholars just as we have had to satisfy them. It’s coming to be a realm of real respectability. I see art as a way of telling our story noncombatively. It’s not aggressive. It seemed to me a lovely way to communicate that might be more suitable for the modern times than our kind of heavy-duty preaching and didactic art, which has been our mainstay for so long.

Where do you see the church going forward?

Well, I have these two big words: cosmopolitanism, which I’ve discussed already, and power. We’ve become a very powerful organization, not just because of our wealth — which is a critical part of power — but because of the very loyal members who are in positions of power, especially in the United States, but more and more in other countries, too. In government, business, scholarships, we have men and women who are right in the center of things. We’ve become influential as a people because there are so many Mormons doing good for their communities. That’s a core strength that is unmatched in the world.

Our challenge right now is to know what to do with this power. We have a duty to save the world, but how do we go about that? We’ve done it through missionary work in the past and we will continue to do that, but do we have some larger calling? The ultimate good end of cosmopolitanism is to recognize that the work of God is going to be handled by the 99.9% of the population that’s not Mormon. It can’t just be this tiny speck of a church.

Still, we need a mission that will inspire our young people and everyone who will say, “Yes, my church is taking major action to make the world a better place. And I want to be part of it.”

(Photo courtesy of Richard Bushman) Richard Bushman along with the Boston Stake presidency and high council, 1973-77. Mitt Romney is in upper left. https://www.sltrib.com/religion/2020/12/31/agnostic-believer/

Nowhere in the Book of Mormon does it say “Urim and Thummim”. It simply says “Interpreters.” Oliver Cowdery in the Pearl of Great Price said, “Day after day I continued, uninterrupted, to write from his [Joseph Smith] mouth, as he translated with the Urim and Thummim, or, as the Nephites would have said, ‘Interpreters,’ the history or record called ‘The Book of Mormon.’”

I love the simplicity of understanding that the Lord had the Brother of Jared place the large breastplate and the two stones in a silver bow and the plates in the stone box at Cumorah in New York. No where was there any individual “seer stone” or oval shaped peep stone in the stone box. In that box were the two stones attached to a silver bow that the Brother of Jared buried and which were touched by the Lord’s finger before their burial. See Ether 3: 28 also D&C 17:1

I believe that Joseph Smith had an individual seer stone or several, but they were not used to translate, but as a righteous instrument to help Joseph in other ways. Many people in Joseph’s day had a peep stone or a stone of some sort to look for treasure. Similarly today, we have crystal balls and Ouija boards. I don’t believe Joseph ever used a stone for any purpose other than to help him do the will of the Lord. We will all receive a “White Stone” in the next life. “He that hath an ear, let him hear what the Spirit saith unto the churches; To him that overcometh will I give to eat of the hidden manna, and will give him a white stone, and in the stone a new name written, which no man knoweth saving he that receiveth it.” Revelation 2:17

I believe Joseph Smith and Oliver Cowdery about how the plates were translated. They are the only two who saw the plates and the Urim and Thummim. (Lucy Mack held and described the breastplate under a linen cloth). Joseph and Oliver’s first hand accounts are to be believed. There are second and third hand accounts from Emma Smith, David Whitmer, Martin Harris, Willian McLellan and others who say Joseph used the stone in the hat (SITH) method, which I just don’t believe.

“With the records was found a curious instrument, which the ancients called “Urim and Thummim,” which consisted of two transparent stones set in the rims of a bow fastened to a breastplate. Through the medium of the Urim and Thummim I translated the record by the gift and power of God.” Joseph Smith Wentworth Letter

“He said there was a book deposited, written upon gold plates, giving an account of the former inhabitants of this continent, and the source from whence they sprang. He also said that the fulness of the everlasting Gospel was contained in it, as delivered by the Savior to the ancient inhabitants;

Also, that there were two stones in silver bows—and these stones, fastened to a breastplate, constituted what is called the Urim and Thummim—deposited with the plates; and the possession and use of these stones were what constituted “seers” in ancient or former times; and that God had prepared them for the purpose of translating the book. …

Again, he told me, that when I got those plates of which he had spoken—for the time that they should be obtained was not yet fulfilled—I should not show them to any person; neither the breastplate with the Urim and Thummim; only to those to whom I should be commanded to show them; if I did I should be destroyed. While he was conversing with me about the plates, the vision was opened to my mind that I could see the place where the plates were deposited, and that so clearly and distinctly that I knew the place again when I visited it. Joseph Smith—History in the Pearl of Great Price or History of the Church, 1:2–79.

Oliver Cowdrey

Oliver Cowdery describes these events thus: “These were days never to be forgotten—to sit under the sound of a voice dictated by the inspiration of heaven, awakened the utmost gratitude of this bosom! Day after day I continued, uninterrupted, to write from his mouth, as he translated with the Urim and Thummim, or, as the Nephites would have said, ‘Interpreters,’ the history or record called ‘The Book of Mormon.’ Oliver Cowdery JSH 1:75 (See* after verse 75)

“Friends and brethren my name is Cowdery, Oliver Cowdery. In the early history of this church I stood identified with [you]. . . . I . . . handled with my hands the gold plates from which [the Book of Mormon] was translated. I also beheld the interpreters. That book is true. Sidney Rigdon did not write it. Mr. Spaulding did not write it. I wrote it myself as it fell from the lips of the prophet.” Miller, journal, 21 Oct. 1848

Joseph Fielding Smith

“While the statement has been made by some writers that the Prophet Joseph Smith used a seer stone part of the time in his translating of the record, and information points to the fact that he did have in his possession such a stone, yet there is no authentic statement in the history of the Church which states that the use of such a stone was made in that translation. The information is all hearsay, and personally, I do not believe that this stone was used for this purpose. The reason I give for this conclusion is found in the statement of the Lord to the Brother of Jared as recorded in Ether 3:22–24. These stones, the Urim and Thummim which were given to the Brother of Jared, were preserved for this very purpose of translating the record, both of the Jaredites and the Nephites. Then again the Prophet was impressed by Moroni with the fact that these stones were given for that very purpose. It hardly seems reasonable to suppose that the Prophet would substitute something evidently inferior under these circumstances. It may have been so, but it is so easy for a story of this kind to be circulated due to the fact that the Prophet did possess a seer stone, which he may have used for some other purposes” (Joseph Fielding Smith, “Doctrines of Salvation,” Vol. 3, 225-26).

James and Hannah Stoddard

Last year the Stoddard’s published an amazing book about the proper use of the Urim and Thummim with translating the Plates. Their incredible research and resource material is very well done. I highly recommend you read it.

Seer Stone V. Urim and Thummim: Book of Mormon Translation on Trial!

 

“Seer Stone v. Urim and Thummim places the Book of Mormon translation on trial, presenting the latest research in one of the most comprehensive treatments of the translation process to date providing encouragement for Latter-day Saints who fear they have been “betrayed” by the translation history taught by the Church for over 190 years.

Did Joseph Smith study and master the Nephite language? Did the Prophet tutor some of the early Brethren in ancient Nephite characters?

Did Joseph Smith translate the Book of Mormon using a dark seer stone in a hat?

Why are progressive historians creating a new history using sources from a man who vowed to wash his hands in the blood of Joseph Smith, while boasting that he had deceived the Prophet and his God?

Has The Church of Jesus Christ of Latter-day Saints covered up its history for nearly 200 years?” James and Hannah Stoddard

Jonathan Neville

“A Man that Can Translate: Joseph Smith and the Nephite Interpreters” by Jonathan Neville

Readers here know I’ve blogged a bit about the translation of the Book of Mormon. This is a critical issue that people continue to debate, although many LDS scholars claim the debate is over.

Two alternative explanations were set forth in the 1834 book Mormonism Unvailed: Joseph produced the Book of Mormon with either

(i) the Urim and Thummim (U&T), or Nephite translators, that Moroni put in his stone box on the Hill Cumorah, as described in the text itself;

OR

(ii) the “peep” stone, or seer stone, that Joseph put into a hat before covering his face with the hat to read the words that appeared. I refer to this as SITH for “stone-in-the-hat” theory.

Some say it doesn’t matter how Joseph produced the Book of Mormon, whether because they think it’s true or they think it’s false. That’s fine with me; people can believe whatever they want, and most people seek only to confirm their biases either way.

Those aren’t the people I write this blog for.

Many people think it matters a great deal how Joseph produced the Book of Mormon. Because Joseph and Oliver spoke about it multiple times, I assume they thought it mattered. For most people, how Joseph produced the Book of Mormon is an important component of “convincing” the world that “Jesus is the Christ” as the Title Page declares.

If Joseph actually translated engravings that were recorded on ancient plates, that demonstrates the divine authenticity of the record. If Joseph merely “read” words that “appeared” on a stone in a hat, or recited words he saw in a vision while staring at such a stone, it is more difficult to see that as a demonstration of the divine authenticity of the record. It’s no wonder that from the outset, critics promoted SITH. As an impediment to acceptance of the Book of Mormon, what is more effective than SITH?

For over 180 years, LDS prophets taught U&T, while critics taught SITH.

However, in recent years, many LDS scholars (including the M2C citation cartel) have agreed with nonbelievers that SITH is correct. They now teach it as a fact. Book of Mormon Central spends millions of dollars to promote this and related ideas.

These scholars believe they are “inoculating” the youth in the Church and new converts by teaching SITH.

Inoculation is a great idea–unless it’s really infection.

Years ago I had a friend who suffered from the effects of a childhood polio vaccine. The manufacturer had released over 100,000 doses in which the virus had not been properly inactivated; people who received those doses received active virus. They were infected, not inoculated.

I think teaching SITH infects people with a false narrative. It’s great for people to learn about the witness statements regarding SITH, but they should also learn what Joseph and Oliver taught. Even better, they should learn how the historical facts support an explanation that reconciles what appears on the surface to be conflicting evidence.

However, our LDS scholars are only “reconciling” the evidence by claiming that Joseph and Oliver, as well as their successors as Church leaders, misled the Church. These scholars say the term “Urim and Thummim” really meant the seer stone, contrary to the historical evidence. They are teaching that Joseph never even used the plates, never used the Nephite interpreters, didn’t really translate anything, etc.

The situation is so dire that even the Gospel Topics Essay on Translation teaches SITH without once quoting what Joseph and Oliver said about the U&T.

Consequently, the narrative promoted by opponents of Joseph Smith to destroy the Restoration has become the prevailing narrative. By now, we all see how that is playing out in terms of the widespread faith crises.

Seeing a need for a detailed, historically documented explanation that supports what Joseph and Oliver taught, while also reconciling the statements from other witnesses, I wrote a A Man that Can Translate. I’ll summarize it below.

I don’t expect our LDS scholars, or critics who reject the Book of Mormon, to agree with my interpretation. Both groups have huge investments of time, reputation, and money in their respective positions. They focus on confirming their biases, not on considering alternative perspectives.
Book of Mormon Central, the most prominent and best-funded member of the citation cartel, identifies itself by a logo that forecloses consideration of alternative perspectives.

I wrote this book mainly for myself, to better understand the historical evidence. When I practiced law, I found that in many cases, the “truth” emerged from a reconciliation of multiple perspectives.

In every case, I would sit and watch the opposition present its case and, while seeing how the facts in evidence might support that version of the truth, I also knew there was an entirely different explanation of those same facts that I was about to present. Sometimes, both as a prosecutor and as a criminal defense lawyer, I knew facts I could not even present for various reasons.

I see the same process taking place when I do historical research. People take a position and then find evidence to support that position. They also seek evidence to discredit someone else’s position. People end up believing whatever they wanted to believe in the first place.

An exception is when someone’s beliefs are based on incomplete facts. In that situation, people are not making informed decisions.

This is why I mention Book of Mormon Central so often. Their approach is the antithesis of helping people make informed decisions because they censor alternative perspectives and insist people adhere to their editorial positions, buttressed by other members of their citation cartel to convey an impression of diversity and scholarship.

As a result of my research, I think both LDS scholars and critics are not making informed decisions.

They’ll undoubtedly disagree; scholars and critics always want to self-identify as “open-minded” and truth seekers who consider all the evidence. But they’re people, subject to bias confirmation, cognitive dissonance, and logical fallacies. As am I, which is why I welcome input if there is any evidence I’ve overlooked.

We published the book for those who are interested and willing to take a new look at the evidence.

Hopefully, some people will find it useful.

There is historical evidence in the form of witness statements to support both theories. They can be summarized this way:

(i) Joseph Smith and Oliver Cowdery always said Joseph translated the plates with the Urim and Thummim by the gift and power of God. A few others corroborated that claim. The first published declaration came in response to Mormonism Unvailed, when Oliver Cowdery declared,

“Day after day I continued, uninterrupted, to write from his mouth, as he translated with the Urim and Thummim, or, as the Nephites would have said, ‘Interpreters,’ the history or record called ‘The Book of Mormon.’” (Joseph Smith—History, Note, 1)

Joseph’s contemporaries and successors in Church leadership always reaffirmed what Joseph and Oliver taught; i.e., that Joseph translated the plates with the Urim and Thummim, or Nephite translators, that came with the plates.

(ii) Other people claimed that Joseph used SITH. Some claimed they were present during the event, others related what they’d heard or understood. Wikipedia collected some of these statements, here:

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Golden_plates#Translating_the_plates

In A Man that Can Translate, I assess the statements and propose the following reconciliation.

Joseph and Oliver were absolutely correct and honest when they said Joseph translated the engravings on the plates by means of the Urim and Thummim and by the gift and power of God. Joseph did not translate any of it with the seer stone.

The translation process was difficult and time-consuming. At the Whitmer farm, Joseph translated from sunrise to sunset, 14-hour days. (In the book I explain why I think Emma and other pre-Oliver scribes recorded most or all of Mosiah, which expands the time for translation in Harmony consistent with the laborious effort in Fayette.)

However, Joseph did conduct one or more demonstrations using the seer stone. Joseph faced a dilemma: Under commandment to not show the U&T or the plates to anyone unless specifically authorized (for good reason), Joseph also had family members and supporters wanting to know how he was translating. The curiosity was interfering with the actual translation. People were familiar with the idea of seer stones in hats, so he did the demonstration. Witnesses and hearsay took it from there, even though Joseph and Oliver always specified Joseph translated with the U&T.

Mormonism Unvailed, which set forth the competing explanations, also set forth the Solomon Spalding theory, which claimed the Book of Mormon was copied from a novel by Spalding, adapted by Sidney Rigdon, who added Christian sermons and rhetoric. The Spalding theory became the predominant explanation for the Book of Mormon outside of the Church in the 1800s, widely reported in newspapers, by ministers, etc.

A key element of the Spalding theory was Joseph reading from the Spalding manuscript from behind a curtain. If you read the major statements about SITH in context, you see that they were prefaced by a rejection of the Spalding theory, including assertions that Joseph had no manuscript or other document to read from. In other words, after Joseph and Oliver died, SITH became a refutation of the Spalding theory.

An interesting detail from the demonstration account is that Joseph had multiple scribes present so they could take over when one got tired. That indicates a rapid dictation–much different from the laborious effort in Harmony and upstairs in Fayette. This detail also tells us that the demonstration had to involve Second Nephi (partly because Emma was one of the scribes at the demonstration and she did not write any of First Nephi). For the reasons explained in the book, I think Joseph used the demonstration to dictate some of the Isaiah chapters in Second Nephi from memory. That’s why these chapters have otherwise inexplicable minor differences from the King James version, etc.

This is merely an overview; you can get the details in the book, supported by hundreds of footnotes.

A Man that Can Translate: Joseph Smith and the Nephite Interpreters

Jonathan Neville | December 18, 2020 at 7:14 pm | Categories: Uncategorized | URL: https://wp.me/p741A5-Xu

Three Small Pillars

“The manner in which the plates were deposited: First, a hole of sufficient depth, (how deep I know not) was dug. At the bottom of this was laid a stone of suitable size, the upper surface being smooth. At each edge was placed a large quantity of cement, and into this cement, at the four edges of this stone, were placed, erect, four others, their bottom edges resting in the cement at the outer edges of the first stone. The four last named, when placed erect, formed a box, the corners, or where the edges of the four came in contact, were also cemented so firmly that the moisture from without was prevented from entering. It is to be observed, also, that the inner surface of the four erect, or side stones was smoothe. This box was sufficiently large to admit a breast-plate, such as was used by the ancients to defend the chest, &c. from the arrows and weapons of their enemy. From the bottom of the box, or from the breast-plate, arose three small pillars composed of the same description of cement used on the edges; and upon these three pillars was placed the record of the children of Joseph, and  of a people who left the tower far, far before the days of Joseph… I must not forget to say that this box, containing the record was covered with another stone, the bottom surface being flat and the upper, crowning. But those three pillars were not so lengthy as to cause the plates and the crowning stone to come in contact. I have now given you, according to my promise, the manner in which this record was deposited; though when it was first visited by our brother, in 1823, a part of the crowning stone was visible above the surface while the edges were concealed by the soil and grass, from which circumstances you will see, that however deep this box might have been placed by Moroni at first, the time had been sufficient to wear the earth so that it was easily discovered when once directed, and yet not enough to make a perceivable difference to the passer-by.” Oliver Cowdery, “Letter VIII,” October 1835

I have a blog called “Plates Lay on 2, 3,or 4 Pillars?”, coming soon, where it is stated the plates rested on “4 pillars” and even on “two stones crossways.”

No Liahona or Sword with the Plates

The reason the Mesoamericans say the Liahona and the Sword of Laban were in the stone box is so they can dispute the fact that there was a Cave at Hill Cumorah in NY as Orson Pratt said.

“The hill Cumorah, with the surrounding vicinity, is distinguished as the great battlefield on which, and near which, two powerful nations were concentrated with all their forces. Men, women and children fought till hundreds of thousands on both sides were hewn down, and left to molder upon the ground. . . .

These new plates were given to Moroni to finish the history. And all the ancient plates, Mormon deposited in Cumorah, about three hundred and eighty-four years after Christ. When Moroni, about thirty-six years after, made the deposit of the book entrusted to him, he was, without doubt, inspired to select a department of the hill separate from the great depository of the numerous volumes hid up by his father. The particular place in the hill where Moroni secreted the book, was revealed, by the angel, to the prophet Joseph Smith, to whom the volume was delivered in September, A.D. 1827. But the grand repository of all the numerous records of the ancient nations of the western continent, was located in another department of the hill, and it’s contents under the charge of holy angels, until the day should come for them to be transferred to the sacred temple of Zion.” 1866 Orson Pratt Millennial Star (28 (27): 417)

Mesoamericanists say the last battle of the Nephites and Lamanites happened in Mexico somewhere and we say it happened at the same Hill in New York.