I and a teenage son have been listening to a podcast called How to Take Over the World.  The host is an LDS brother who does a deep dive into various great men of history and then does a podcast about them.  In a nod to the demands of the podcast biz, he then does a little summary for each one of the lessons of their path to greatness.  Some of these little lessons are strained, especially if you treat them as lessons on business success, but some of them are quite interesting.

The last two I heard were about Edwin Land, the founder of Polaroid, and one of the ones on Jesus.   The best thing from the Land podcast was Land’s conviction that ‘you are only two weeks from changing your life.’  What he meant by this was that if you could dedicate two solid weeks straight to something, no distractions, decks completely cleared, you could do great work and achieve great skills that otherwise might take years.  I have only ever done this once or twice–it worked (for certain levels of greatness).  The most interesting insights from the Jesus podcast were Jesus’ conviviality.  He liked feasting and dinner parties.  And also Jesus’ keen eye.  He *noticed* people and the natural world around him.

The implied conceit of the podcast is that greatness is one singular thing and each biography is revealing a little more to you of its secrets.  But what strikes me is how little these great men often have in common.  The secrets to one guy’s success are the opposite of the secrets of another guy’s success.  Here is Edwin Land and team buried in a little warehouse he rented, he’s on one of his two-week sprints, straw-tick mattresses on the concrete floor, literally working until he drops from exhaustion and is dragged over to one of the mattresses…. and here is Jesus, feasting with the publicans and Pharisees.

I have the strong conviction that each one of us has a path to greatness in this life.   It may not be the same path as anyone else.  Nor is it the same greatness as anyone else.  But it is there, and the Spirit beckons you to take it.

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There are many doctrinal arguments that are unworth having – they amount to angels dancing on pins. There is currently a debate online amongst Latter Day Saints, about the Doctrine of Infinite Regress, or if you prefer, the Doctrine of an Infinite Lineage, of Family of Heavenly Parents. And this debate does have both genuine importance and current relevance, beyond simply agreeing with former prophets.

It is also worth noting we are not in the position of churches with a dead canon with largely settled creedal theology.  There are still real debates to be had. And God does want us to really think and struggle with profound doctrine. But instead of relitigating the evidence in this debate (it was certainly what the Brethren taught for a long time), let’s discuss why this is important, instead of only arguing about LDS Sola Scriptura.

Because it has everything to do with the doctrine of the Family. (more…)

Once long ago a dog set out to visit the Great Oracle at the End of the World.  His journey took many months but at the end he came to the Great Oracle at the End of the World which gave him many wise sayings.

On his long weary journey back he repeated the sayings over and over again to fix them in his mind as well as he could.

When he returned he went from place to place repeating them.  The animals were moved and delighted and many tried to repeat them and pass them on also.

After many generations, crow scholars were able to show that different variations of the current wise sayings existed in different places among the animals, and that some of the sayings attributed to the Great Oracle at the End of the World were of more recent provenance, showing no sign at all of reverent antiquity; and other sayings had been corrupted.  One that stuck in everyone’s mind was a saying ‘when life is darkest,  there is the piggest hope.’  The actual saying was ‘biggest’ it turned out.

The crows also unearthed a saying from the dog where he admitted that he himself was not sure he remembered all the sayings accurately.  “These are the best I’ve got,” he said.

From  then on, when anyone tried to repeat some wisdom from the sayings, the jackals and the parrots and the hyenas and even the crows would jeer, ‘biggest piggest these are the best I’ve got!’

So on the one hand you had all the nasty animals and even some decent ones mocking and disgusted with the sayings because they had flaws.  And you had good and decent animals defending them and benefiting from them.

But there were no more dogs proposing to make another trip to the Great Oracle at the End of the World.

This is from a different text, called the Cave of Treasures. If the Garden of Eden was Adam and Eve’s temple before the Fall, the Cave was their temple after they left the Garden. This text gives details about the reign of each Patriarch. The descriptions of what the descendants of Cain were doing are quite explicit. Ahem… quite explicit.

One of the interesting things, is that this is telling the same story as in 1st Enoch, but it is clear, that the people who sinned, were the descendants of Seth who left the Saints. We also see something that the Book of Moses makes clearer than Genesis does, that their were two bloodlines, Seth and Cain, and they were parallel in many ways. Next time you read Moses, notice how Cain ends up doing all the things Adam was doing. Adam makes covenants with God, while Cain makes covenants with Satan.

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This is chapter 69, under the traditional chapter numbering.

The thing that struck me the most, was how one of the Watchers taught the people “the smitings of the embryo in the womb, that it may pass away,”

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(The Booths, co-founders of the Salvation Army, married in June)

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Another one passed without a mention in our sacrament meeting.
But we did get tape  measures after, so that was nice.

Chapter 6
Taken by Angels
1 Angels took and brought me to a place in which those who were there were
like flaming fire, and when they wished, they appeared as men.
2 And they brought me to the place of darkness, and to a mountain the point of
whose summit reached to heaven.
3 And I saw the places of the luminaries and the treasuries of the stars and of the
thunder and in the uttermost depths, where were a fiery bow and arrows and
their quiver, and a fiery sword and all the lightnings.
4 And they took me to the living waters, and to the fire of the west, which
receives every setting of the sun.
5 And I came to a river of fire in which the fire flows like water and discharges
itself into the great sea towards the west.
6 I saw the great rivers and came to the great river and to the great darkness, and
went to the place where no flesh walks. I saw the mountains of the darkness of
winter and the place whence all the waters of the deep flow.
7 I saw the mouths of all the rivers of the earth and the mouth of the deep.
8 I saw the treasuries of all the winds, I saw how He had furnished with them the
whole creation and the firm foundations of the earth.
9 And I saw the cornerstone of the earth, I saw the four winds which bear the
firmament of the heaven.
10 And I saw how the winds stretch out the vaults of heaven, and have their
station between heaven and earth: these are the pillars of the heaven.
11 I saw the winds of heaven which turn and bring the circumference of the sun
and all the stars to their setting.
12 I saw the winds on the earth carrying the clouds: I saw the paths of the angels.
13 I saw at the end of the earth the firmament of the heaven above and I
proceeded and saw a place which burns day and night, where there are seven
mountains of magnificent stones.
14 Three towards the east, and three towards the south. And as for those towards
the east, was of coloured stone, and one of pearl, and one of jacinth, and those
towards the south of red stone.
15 But the middle one reached to heaven like the throne of God, of alabaster, and
the summit of the throne was of sapphire.
16 And I saw a flaming fire. And beyond these mountains is a region the end of
the great earth: there the heavens were completed.
17 And I saw a deep abyss, with columns of heavenly fire, and among them I
saw columns of fire fall, which were beyond measure alike towards the height
and towards the depth.
18 And beyond that abyss I saw a place which had no firmament of the heaven
above, and no firmly founded earth beneath it: there was no water upon it, and
no birds, but it was a waste and horrible place.
19 I saw there seven stars like great burning mountains, and to me, when I
inquired regarding them. The angel said: “This place is the end of heaven and
earth. This has become a prison for the stars and the host of heaven.
20 And the stars which roll over the fire are they which have transgressed the
commandment of the Lord in the beginning of their rising, because they did not
come forth at their appointed times.
21 And He was wroth with them, and bound them till the time when their guilt
should be consummated for ten thousand years.”
22 And Uriel said to me: “Here shall stand the angels who have connected
themselves with women, and their spirits assuming many different forms are
defiling mankind and shall lead them astray into sacrificing to demons as gods.
23 Here shall they stand, till the day of the great judgement in which they shall
be judged till they are made an end of. And the women also of the angels who
went astray shall become sirens.”
24 And I, Enoch, alone saw the vision, the ends of all things: and no man shall
see as I have seen.

In this chapter, we have Enoch talking with God on this throne, about this problem, and what he is to tell the Watchers.

The thing that most impresses me, is at the end when God tells Enoch, that in spite of running off with all this knowledge, they hadn’t even got to the good stuff yet. It was the most useless stuff that they ran off with.

Also interesting, in v. 28-32, we see these Giants become wicked spirits. Thus, what the Watchers did, didn’t only have a temporal Earthly effect. It also had a long term spiritual effect, to this day! We are not only fighting the Satan’s Fallen Angels, we are also contending with apostate Giants!

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The Rape Gang Inquiry Report was released yesterday.  I will not be reading it.  I can’t.  If even a tithe is true, and it is no disrespect to the victims to suspect that there are inaccuracies and exaggerations, this is a world-historic atrocity.

I tried and after a bit it  seemed impossible to be in a world of introductions and conclusions and fonts and layouts when things like this could happen in a modern country.

Here it is

A summary

The real problem of evil is that evil like this exists.  I can’t understand it.

I don’t have a lot of comments on this chapter, but it is interesting that the punishment of the Watchers is tied to both the Flood, and to a latter-day renewal of righteousness.

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The real trolley problem

Once there was a Emperor who had nations and cities and kingdoms at his gift.

He had the custom of calling in his high servants and ranking subjects to a special room in his palace.  In that room was a glossy wood cabinet with two drawers side by side.   Each drawer was identical in all respects. He would then open each drawer and show the trembling subject the contents.  In each drawer was a parchment decree of one page only, with the same headings and formulas, with the same imperial signature at the bottom, and with the name of the person in the same place in the same way on each.  The only difference was this.  On the one decree, it said that His servant or subject thus and so was to be killed.  On the other it said that His servant or subject thus and so was to be crowned.  Killed or crowned, the distinction was just that one word.

The Emperor would  then close the drawers and tell the frightened soul that he, the Emperor, has his eye on them, and then they were dismissed.

There happened to be in that land a philosopher who poured contempt on the souls that seemed to be so visibly shaken by their visit to this room of the Emperor’s.  All this to-do about these differences in these parchments?  Why, he said, it was clean contrary to reason.  The parchments were 99.99% identical, even if one arbitrarily excluded the drawers that housed them, which were also identical.  When cutting through the mysticism and hoo-ha, these parchments were materially identical.

It must be said the the philosopher had never visited the room himself, nor was he likely to.

Official Daughter No. X informs us that while at college, a group of friends were standing around chatting and one of the guys told a whopper.

She pulled up 2 Nephi 9:32 on her phone–Wo unto the liar…–and handed it to him with a big smirk.

He looked perplexed and turned the phone around for her to look at with a strange look on his face.

She had fat-fingered the phone while handing it over and it was now on 2 Nephi 9:33–Wo unto the uncircumcised…

For Father’s Day, productive and insightful way to read the transition from Judges to Kings, led by Samuel,  is to read it as a change from one mode of authority to another.  This is not a strain on  the text–that is basically what it is about.

My own summary is that the rule of the judges was lighter and looser.  It required Israel to obey without compulsion, which in practice meant going to the  judges to resolve disputes and voluntarily flocking to the judge’s banner when there was an invasion.  Judges were selected by charisma and competence, since following them was a choice.  This worked really well when it worked.

But by Eli and certainly Samuel’s day, the system no longer worked.    Eli and Samuel had lots of prestige but weren’t war leaders or really even leaders at all (not even in their own households).  My personal speculation why is that they didn’t try because they knew they would be ignored.  What isn’t speculation is that the people clamoring for a King gave the shirker problem as their reason for wanting one.  They said  they needed someone to force the hold-outs  and shirkers to go to war, and I think we should believe them.

So the evils of a monarchy that the Lord tells the people through Samuel, were also the goods.  Conscription and taxes allowed for the overbearing tyrannical rulers we see later (and even Saul and David had their lapses) but also meant that Israel was no longer hamstrung by coordination problems and defections in the snake-pit of Middle Eastern state violence.  Notice that this wasn’t just a solution for the shirkers.  Even the people who wanted to rally like in the days of old suffered from a lack of recognized leader–because if you rallied and no one else did, at very best you wasted a bunch of time and effort for nothing, traveling to the gathering place and sitting around and then futilely going back home again–and at worst you would get crushed by the invaders–so likely even the people who wanted to help sat around waiting to see if anyone else would.

Let’s liken this to ourselves.

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