Do you think there is calamity abroad now among the people?…All we have yet heard and all we have experienced is scarcely a preface to the sermon that is going to be preached. When the testimony of the Elders ceases to be given, and the Lord says to them, ‘come home; I will now preach My own sermons to the nations of the earth,’ all you now know can scarcely be called a preface to the sermon that will be preached with fire and sword, tempests, earthquakes, hail, rain, thunders, and lightnings and fearful destruction. What matters the destruction of a few railway cars? You will hear of magnificent cities, now idolized by the people, sinking in the earth, entombing the inhabitants. The sea will heave itself beyond its bounds, engulfing mighty cities. Famine will spread over the nations, and nation will rise up against nation, kingdom against kingdom, and states against states, in our own country and in foreign lands; and they will destroy each other, caring not for the blood and lives of their neighbors, of their families, or for their own lives. They will be like the Jaredites who preceded the Nephites upon this continent, and will destroy each other to the last man, through the anger that the devil will place in their hearts, because they have rejected the words of life and are given over to Satan to do whatever he listeth to do with them. You may think that the little you hear of now is grievous; yet the faithful of God’s people will see days that will cause them to close their eyes because of the sorrow that will come upon the wicked nations. The hearts of the faithful will be filled with pain and anguish for them.

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Bob, an 89-year-old in Utah, died this week. He was 21 when he and 19-year-old Lola got married in Las Vegas. They had four children togeether, but later in life they divorced and each married someone else. Lola was born in Provo and raised in a Mormon family; Bob was never a member of the Church.

So how many days will it be before some enterprising fourth cousin of Lola takes care of temple ordinances for Bob? Will that cousin, or another of Lola’s hundreds of such cousins, set up news alerts so she will know when Lola dies, so she can attend to a proxy sealing before someone else does? Will another cousin jump the gun and set up a proxy sealing before Lola dies?

Church policy, in case that matters to anyone, is:

Except as noted in 28.3, proxy ordinances may be performed for all deceased persons as soon as 30 days have passed from their date of death if either of the following applies:

A close relative of the deceased (undivorced spouse, adult child, parent, or sibling) submits the name for temple ordinances.

Permission to perform the ordinances is received from a close relative of the deceased (undivorced spouse, adult child, parent, or sibling).

If neither of the above conditions applies, proxy temple ordinances may be performed 110 years after the deceased person was born.

My Dear Wormwood,

What a time to be in the field, tempting souls! I am absolutely envious. Even a tempter of your modest skill and experience with more souls than you can handle! I don’t need to hear your complaints. You are not overworked, you are in the midst of a feast, with souls throwing themselves at you. Enjoy it.

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A  knowledge of truth is essential to salvation.  What is truth?  Let’s check D&C 93, starting around verse 24.

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A few weeks ago I snapped the above photo about 27 minutes after the closing prayer of my ward’s sacrament service. This is what will usually be seen in the chapel at that time most Sundays. One of the ways in which holding priesthood meeting prior to the sacrament service works out nicely.

Catherine Pakaluk, mother of eight, social scientist, and author of Hannah’s Children: The Women Quietly Defying the Birth Dearth, will speak at a BYU Forum next month. Below are links to a couple interviews.

Public Discourse
“I did not go into this project thinking about her, but at some point analyzing my data—we should call the narratives ‘data’ or use the sociological term ‘hearing data’—various aspects of the story of the biblical Hannah jumped out at me. I saw that her basic attitudes about childbearing and the meaning of life looked like the women in my sample. The biblical Hannah became, for me, an archetype to help describe what I discovered in the stories. Though barren, Hannah prayed to be blessed with a child. We all know what came next: she received her son, Samuel. What we all don’t know these days, however, is that God sent her five more children after she brought her firstborn, Samuel, to live in the service of God. The women I met generally didn’t set about to have large families—rather, they valued children greatly, like the biblical Hannah, and saw children as blessings.”

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We were in a ward last Sunday where the lesson was ‘Taking Charge of Tech.’  They had taken the Church lesson for parents and converted it into a one-sheet handout front-and-back.  It was surprisingly good.  The Purpose, Plan, Pause mantra is sound.

My daughter was an FSY counselor this summer.  She said the ‘taking charge of tech’ discussions were normally her favorite.   Everyone was engaged and spiritual.  Her main lessons were ‘change has to come from you’ and ‘you can’t just say no to bad tech use, you have to say yes to something positive.’  We had a long family discussion in the car the next day (we were on a family trip) and it went really well.

(For humor purposes only)

I was thinking of the stereotypes, with some basis in reality, that Joseph Smith was a great visionary and Brigham Young was a great organizer, and thought of a virtue chart for them.  But who would the antonyms be?  Who are the bad visionary and the bad organizer to pair them with?

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There are worse things than stretching in an early morning parking lot of a small town motel, watching the last stars on the silvering horizon

A new train engineer was learning about his duties and his assigned route.

“first,” he was told, ” there’s a long slope down.  You can coast, gathering speed.”

“Next,” he was told, “there is a long flat stretch.  You can coast for a while on the speed from the slope and then you will continue to chug along under your own power.”

“Sounds easy,” the fresh-faced engineer said, ” so what’s the problem?”

“The problem is the switch.  When you come barreling down the slope and are abruptly pulled up by the flats.”

I’m not sure what a good word would be for the vicious or imperfect form of Spirit.  Pride?  The ultimate unmoored egoism?

Here’s the synthesis chart. (more…)

I am tempted to read this promise in the Word of Wisdom as an easter egg prophecy that the Word of Wisdom would one day be included in the temple recommend interview.

And all saints who remember to keep and do these sayings, walking in obedience to the commandments, shall receive health in their navel and marrow to their bones;

-thus D&C 89:18

My belief is that it is verse 11–

Eat fruits and herbs only in season

–and verse 17–

Which states that specific grains are meant for specific species and implies that low alcohol beers might be okay.

I don’t talk about them either because I don’t have any idea what they mean.  I sometimes think the word of wisdom was given, this is not a joke I really do think this, to curious of our addiction for finding answers to all our questions in the scriptures instead of relying on modern prophets and modern revelation.

The word of wisdom in the doctrine of covenants in a sense is not the real word of wisdom.

I turned to the scripture citation index to see if it matched my view about what parts of the word of wisdom don’t get discussed.

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The sage came to a structure–a thing he had never seen before–and decided to explore its use.  First he tried clinging to the ceiling, but this was hard and inconvenient.  Second he tried the floor.  Though less difficult, it was still uncomfortable and there were ants.  Rejecting these two extremes, he then spied a table.  Clinging to its underside, from time to time able to rest his buttocks on the ground when his grip grew weak, but able to lift himself off the floor when the ants bothered him and his buttocks grew stiff, the sage was satisfied that he had found the right way to dwell.

And there, clinging to the underside of a table, we leave our virtuous sage.

One of the smart person “well ackshully’s” is that the word apocalypse doesn’t mean the end of the world.  It means revelation.

?????????? (apokálupsis): “unveiling” or “uncovering”

It’s just that the Apocalypse of John turns out to be, well, apocalyptic, so the meaning in English has become what it is.

But this apparently random linguistic drift is either a remarkable coincidence or has divine providence behind it. (more…)