What if the fairy tales were true?
Once upon a time, there was a boy who found a great treasure in the woods…
Christ’s in his heaven,
delightful’s his earth,
The Saints are a leaven,
bubbling with mirth.
https://nitter.poast.org/UniverseBYU/status/1848507056581709921
I just took G’s numbers and did a crude simulation.
These are for US national and LDS numbers, where P0 is the childbearing population and P1 is the older non childbearing. Can you tell the difference?
We are the one with the tiny bump. But both show a half life of childbearing population of about 50 years and a total population of roughly 150. Basically indistinguishable.
This is a crude simulation and I don’t promise there are no mistakes. Still, all is NOT well in Zion.
And just for fun, this is the ratio of childbearing vs non-childbearing populations.
So, mostly old people.
After a lengthy delay, we return with more Isaiah!
As I mentioned in the previous post, chapters 40 & 41:1-20 are the gospel proclaimed, to Israel. In the next post, this will be extended to the Gentiles. But this has more depth than you might guess at first glance. The central part of this chiasmus askes the question, Do you really understand, or believe the Doctrine of the Creation? Then we look at future events (it would have been future events for the people of Isaiah’s time) and ask, Do you still believe God is in control? Let’s look at this in more detail.
Three Voices of Comfort (40:1-11)
* The Voice of him that crieth in the wilderness (40:3-5)
* What shall I cry? All flesh is grass (40:6-8)
* O Zion that bringeth good tidings… say unto the cities of Judah, Behold! Your God! (40:9-11)
The Lord is a Creator, who rules his Creation (40:12-31)
The Lord is the Ruler of history and of the world (41:1-7)
Three Examples of Comfort (41:8-20)
* I will help thee (41:8-13)
* From worm to harvesting mountains (41:14-16)
* Needy sustained in the desert (41:17-20)
We are corrupt.
We are so corrupt and we are ripening for destruction.
We are anxiously busy killing ourselves.
This drug may have some real benefits, but I have utterly lost confidence in so-called medical experts.
Something that I think might help a lot of people from President Nelson’s talk.
(Paraphrasing from my notes)– The desire and the struggle to end sin is itself the end of sin. The rest is God’s timing.
That blighter Fink-Nottle won the Scripture Prize with his sleeves positively bursting with lists of the Kings of Judah–absolutely!–and on the strength of it they are making him the candidate to stand for MP in the local hustings and the Telegraph has consulting testing integrity experts who say that his blasted skullduggery doesn’t qualify as cheating. It makes a common man of the people like Bertram Wooster dashed shirty. I mean to say, one rule for the toffs and another for a hard-working blue collar fellow like yours truly!
So argues a team of Spanish researchers in a splashy new documentary.
Reasons for skepticism:
That said, it could be true.
I had a peculiar nightmare a few days ago.
***
I dreamed that about ten years older than I now am, I was called to be the prophet. I felt a suffocating weight of responsibility. I decided I needed to be healthy and vigorous throughout the term of the calling so I determined that in a year’s time and every year thereafter I would swim to the California shore from an island off the coast (in my dream, Catalina Island). This resolution would make sure I kept up with exercise and health even in the middle of the day to day press of the job, and it would also mean that when I became absolutely too frail to do my duties, I would free up the office for someone else, by dieing.
I dreamed I did my first swim. It was hard and desperate, but I made it.
Same thing the next year and for many more years. It was never easy.
Finally I was getting well on in years, 80s or 90s, something like that, and feeble. I had a feeling I might not make it this time. I start out swimming. There’s a boat trailing along with my wife and some Church people. The water is cold and choppy. Waves keep slapping me in the face. I am so cold. The sky is gray. About half way through I can’t go further on, I start going under, the water is all around me filling my mouth, I can’t see, I can’t breathe, and a hand reaches down and grabs my arm. I convulsively grab back. They hoist me out of the water onto the boat. We then proceed to the shore. I am hunched over under a blanket and brooding. I realize that my plan was stupid all along. Of course if I were drowning someone would try to rescue me. And in the extremity of drowning, of course I would take the help.
We are camped out along the California beach that night. I sneak off and steal a rowboat. I row across to the island. It is very dark, no lights, no stars. I slide into the black water and start shivering immediately. I start to swim. It hurts so bad, I am at my last strength almost immediately. About 1/3 of the way across, I drown. I can’t breathe, I can only barely twitch my limbs, I am sinking under, the water swirls around me, I am going under under under
.. and then I woke up gasping.
It gives me the shivers writing about it now.
Here’s a general conference retrospective for t he October 2024 semiannual.
I personally received less inspiration than normal but what I did receive was directly aimed at the concerns I brought in.
What you get here isn’t the inspiration. It’s notes, some of them idiosyncratic and none the produce of mature reflection.
Please enjoy this conference. Pray for the spirit of revelation to rest upon God’s prophets and God’s people.