The Nephites baptized before Christ.  At the time of 3 Nephi 11, they would have been practicing baptism in a tradition and with authority that traced back at least to Alma.

Yet Christ gave Nephi and the other disciples authority to baptize.

And the Lord said unto him: I give unto you power that ye shall baptize this people when I am again ascended into heaven.

And again the Lord called others, and said unto them likewise; and he gave unto them power to baptize.

Christ gives them the sacrament which is usually something that would only be done for the already baptized.  Why did Christ renew the grant of authority and require rebaptism?

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“How bad can this flood get?” said the man.    “Is it a 200-year flood?  A thousand-year flood?  We are in unprecedented territory.  I don’t know of a reliable way to model it.”

“Very bad,” said Noah.  “Repent and build a boat.”

Bruce Charlton says we are experiencing

This dullest, seediest, most mundane of apocalypses/ revolutions

And Wm. Jas T.  says

I had not been prepared for just how stupid the apocalypse would be

That is one of the key insights of the Screwtape Letters.  Evil is not interesting.  Urbane, witty evil is just a tactic that evil can only sustain for a little while.  The show doesn’t go on.

(Note:  I don’t think we are literally currently experiencing the apocalypse.  It can get duller, seedier, and stupider yet.)

It’s April 1990.  A few months ago the people tore down the Berlin Wall while the guards stood by.  The lights that were put out a lifetime ago are going back on all over eastern Europe.

And Elder Perry is thinking about the people of Israel who became free from bondage many lifetimes ago and what Moses taught them to help them preserve their liberty and make it of worth.  Very interesting, especially what he saw as our equivalent of the rites and peculiar commandments of the Mosaic laws.  It is a talk called Family Traditions from the Saturday morning session of the April 1990 General Conference.

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Many relationship conflicts are conflicts of virtues.  Virtues come in opposing pairs.  If a man is particularly alive to a virtue, it is likely to be the case that he has a harder time recognizing the vice that distorts the virtue.  If he is particularly alive to a virtue, it is likely he can see even the faintest hint of the opposing vice, and reacts in horror.  Which means  he has a harder time seeing the opposing virtue.

So when a husband and wife have opposing virtues–and they will, somewhere–each one is particularly likely to stray into the vice that is paired with the virtue, and each one is particularly likely to sound the alarm at the opposing virtue even when there isn’t much of the vice in it if at all.

Because our  natural virtues and natural vices are often the results of some character trait that is  neither good nor bad in itself.   The angel in the Great Divorce asks the man who carries his sin around with him in the form of a whispering reptile for permission to kill it.  The man is terrified, there is dialogue, and finally the man agrees in a whimper.  The angel slashes . . . but when the lizard falls dead, it transforms into a unicorn that the man rides off on.  The virtue is the redeemed face of the vice.  The vice was the corrupted form of the virtue.

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I find absolutely no grounds for optimism, and I have every reason for hope.

–thus Paul Mankowski, SJ.

Here is an uneven essay arguing that the economy should be family centered instead of individual centered. Uneven, but full of plums. So, little Jack Horner, stick in your thumb. What a good boy you are!

Highlights:

The idea that economics is the study of markets is one of the greatest mistakes of our time. Properly understood, economics is the study of the production of goods and the provision of services. The market is only one realm in which goods production and service provision are found. The others are the family, the state, and civil society (the nonprofit or charity realm). The family is the oldest economic institution, as the very term “economics”—from the Greek word for household management—suggests.

Each of the four interlocking economies that make up the econ­omy as a whole is based on a different set of principles. In the family economy, family relationships govern the pattern of both contributions and entitlements among family members. In the public econ­omy, the state takes in taxes and provides goods or services to citizens according to some conception of the public interest. In the market, goods are produced and services are provided by firms or individuals in return for profits or wages. In the nonprofit or charity economy, people donate gifts of money or labor to organizations which help needy individuals or supply social goods (like higher education or museums or hospitals or symphony orchestras).

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You will want to read Elder Bednar’s talk. What would you be doing with your time instead? You won’t be sorry.

Your marriage happiness comes when you sacrifice, he says.

And there are a few echoes of that Elder Maxwell poetry.

And these strong Step 3 lines about the divine pattern of marriage:

Establishing family patterns and traditions that give meaning to the ordinary tasks of life.

…

Helping with grandchildren, as the ever-widening circle of life and family continues.

Who wants their kids to be raised by the DMV?

Get as much education as you can, in school if necessary.

Inoculation means making sure children learn about the doubt-raising stuff somewhere along the way. The Gospels’ chronology cannot be reconciled! Evolution and geology! Joseph Smith was credibly accused of marrying whats-her-name! Neuroscientists don’t believe in free will! Zelph the White Lamanite!

If raised by faithful parents and teachers, the kids won’t feel that things are being kept secret and will better be able to work through the concern and can be given contextual information and apologetics and the case against and so on.

Sure. Fine by me.

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It was a liberating moment when I realized I didn’t have to keep a daily journal. Some people like that. Well and good. I don’t. Too much dull and silly that way.

Instead, I write occasionally for family events, stories, and for God’s dealings with me.

No surprise, then, that Elder Andersen’s talk on Spiritually Defining Moments delighted me. It had the best stories.

I reread is yesterday. There is a section where he talks about recognizing the Spirit and how we can know we are having a spiritually defining moment. Everything he says about recognizing the Spirit is about recognizing spiritual moments, and very worth your while. But how about recognizing spiritually defining moments? Only we can know if a moment is spiritually defining or not, because only we can decide if we will let some experience define us or not. We get to choose.

A doctor must first attend medical school. School is finite and much shorter than medical practice; but (If opportunities are grasped), that which is learned at school may have “permanent” and beneficial effects on the large future beyond.

Thus the benefits of medical school are best grasped when the student knows he is destined for a long professional practice.

Thus we are meant to be confident in our salavation, confident that we resurrect and go to Heaven after this life. Confidence is correct.

-thus Bruce Charlton. I was tempted to excerpt the whole thing, so you might as well go read it, it’s short.

A student could be motivated in medical school by the fear of failing and not becoming a doctor. Their ultimate motivation would still be becoming a doctor, but in an abstract and remote way. Getting through medical school would just be another hoop to jump through. Cheating would begin to look attractive. And if something came up to prolong their education, perhaps some remarkable new explosion of effective medical knowledge they needed to learn they would be angry. Haven’t I already worked hard? they would say. (more…)

What translations do you recommend for Homer and Horace and Virgil?

I prefer poetry that reads like poetry, I don’t like attempts to read ultra-modern, and I like translations that have a whiff of foreignness to them.

My freshman year in high school we read the Odyssey. There is a feast scene where they are roasting beefs out of doors and the scene and the poetry brought me a kind of sense of ancient greekness that has not quite left me since. I wish I could remember which it was.

Let’s talk about partial survivalism.  What if there were middle ground between business as normal and the collapse of everything?

Then you might worry about being flexible and starting with small and simple measures that could work for a number of different kinds of scenarios.

Things like physical fitness, getting your finances in order, having a family emergency contact plan, an evacuation plan, a 72-hour kit, then perhaps a 3 months supply, and so on.

You might worry as much about having passports in order and some portable wealth as you would your cabin in the woods.

I found this thread on ‘stack survivalism.’  Same concept.

https://mobile.twitter.com/vgr/status/1300205315598610433

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I’m reading Saving Faith right now. It’s about how to raise your kids to be strong in the gospel. So far the answer is, its pretty easy. You don’t have to have searing answers to gospel questions. You have to care, and pray and study scriptures in your home, and go to church. Simple as.

It reminds me of this revelation I got in General Conference in 2018.

Capering on the Walls