This is an incomplete thought that has been percolating in my mind for a long time. Tear it apart as you see fit.

I think Enoch could not have done what he did without Adam and Abel having died first.

I think that the Tribes of Ephraim & Manassah prospered to such a degree, because of their father, Joseph. Likewise, for Abraham’s children VS Lot’s, Isaac’s children VS Ishmael’s, Jacob’s VS Easu’s.

I think that the early church after the Savior, never had a chance to keep the fulness of the Gospel, not because of their spirituality, because they lacked the spiritual foundation of ancestors supporting them.

The church in our day, was given a chance to establish Zion, but failed, at least a bit partly because of their roots. We will have no excuse not to establish Zion, because even if we are first generation members, the roots of the Church members go back 200 years.

Those roots are important. We, without them, can not be saved.

Ammon et al’s mission to the Lamanites reveals a unique state structure that we never see again in the Book of Mormon.  There is a Lamanite high king who is acknowledged by subsidiary kings as their overlord.  King Lamoni calls him father, he calls King Lamoni son.

It is very possible that they weren’t father and son.  There are numerous examples of ancient monarchies where the ranking monarch calls himself the father of his tributary kings, and they call him son.

On the other hand, Lamoni refers to another tributary king as his friend, not as his brother.  I also think it would be unusual for an overlord king to be travelling without retinue to visit a tributary king but less unusual for an irascible dad to just take off on his own to visit his young upstart puppy of a son for some much needed words of remonstrance.

(It is possible that there were retinue there, just not mentioned.  In the early stages of state/empire formation–which is where I think the Lamanites were at–the king is still a warrior and expected to maintain challenges to his authority himself.)

(Speaking of the early stages of state/empire formation, the kind of political arrangement you see with a main king and tributary kings is typical of that stage)

(It is also extremely common to appoint trusted sons and brothers as important subrulers and viceroys at any stage in monarchy, not just at the formation stage.  See Edward III, Edward IV, or Charles II)

Charles II’s Admiral of the Fleet–his brother James.

There isn’t one.  Goodness is a thing, not an abstraction.  You have to experience it from the inside to know it.  So much flows from this truth.

Anciently, letters were numbers and it was a bit of sacred numeralogy to see what the numbers add up to. And numbers had certain meanings.

That said, it is interesting that

1776 (Declaration of Independence) = 777

1788 (Constitution radified) = 888

In Congress, July 4, 1776

The unanimous Declaration of the thirteen united States of America, When in the Course of human events, it becomes necessary for one people to dissolve the political bands which have connected them with another, and to assume among the powers of the earth, the separate and equal station to which the Laws of Nature and of Nature’s God entitle them, a decent respect to the opinions of mankind requires that they should declare the causes which impel them to the separation.

We hold these truths to be self-evident, that all men are created equal, that they are endowed by their Creator with certain unalienable Rights, that among these are Life, Liberty and the pursuit of Happiness.–That to secure these rights, Governments are instituted among Men, deriving their just powers from the consent of the governed, –That whenever any Form of Government becomes destructive of these ends, it is the Right of the People to alter or to abolish it, and to institute new Government, laying its foundation on such principles and organizing its powers in such form, as to them shall seem most likely to effect their Safety and Happiness. Prudence, indeed, will dictate that Governments long established should not be changed for light and transient causes; and accordingly all experience hath shewn, that mankind are more disposed to suffer, while evils are sufferable, than to right themselves by abolishing the forms to which they are accustomed. But when a long train of abuses and usurpations, pursuing invariably the same Object evinces a design to reduce them under absolute Despotism, it is their right, it is their duty, to throw off such Government, and to provide new Guards for their future security.–Such has been the patient sufferance of these Colonies; and such is now the necessity which constrains them to alter their former Systems of Government. The history of the present King of Great Britain is a history of repeated injuries and usurpations, all having in direct object the establishment of an absolute Tyranny over these States. To prove this, let Facts be submitted to a candid world.

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There’s a saying among us that you can’t beat a positive with a negative.  In other words, you can’t beat a vision just by telling people no, you have to supply them with some actual replacement for it.

While I generally agree, I’m not so sure that’s true for the sabbath.  I have found that if I supply the negatives–if I refrain from doing stuff–God supplies the positives.

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From somewhere out there, I think probably SF author Devon Eriksen

I run into these all the time, sometimes in the same discussion from the same person.  And, ahem, may have been guilty of perpetrating them a time or two.

We presume you are all reading the duckstack for the humor, like this week’s heister ratings.  It is after all funnier than the JG.

(Ed.–that’s damning with faint praise, like saying its funnier than a toothache.

Us, primly: Many toothaches are quite droll.)

But once you’ve laughed that over, stick around for the meditation on why God answers small prayers more than big ones.

P.S.  Or maybe its just because there are so many more of them?

HT Sutton

I think that understanding chiasmus is important, because it is part of how related concepts are explained. For instance here, the point about contention is deliberately contrasted with the Holy Ghost. You don’t fully understand it, if you don’t see that.

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There are two ways the sacrament is present in Lehi’s Dream. The first is the fruit (which is Christ) which is both fleshy and juicy. Blood and flesh of the tree.

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I had a dream of a huge field next to a pine woods.  It was early twilight.  The trunks were dark but the sky was light.  there was a young couple who fled into the woods from the field.  There were men chasing them who were trying to shoot them.  As they fled the shots started.  They had to stop holding hands and break up to duck behind trees.  The slender pine trunks were just barely enough to offer one person shelter from the bullets.  There was an old rotten shell of the trunk of an oak that was large enough to shelter two, but it was too rotten to stop a bullet.  So the couple fled through the woods from tree to tree crying to each other.  The guns fired on.

An overhead half a phone conversation between two girlchild cousins

Girl: We should be called the Aspen Unicorns!

…

Girl: OK, the Aspen Spies!  But for short just ass!

No one wants to be innocent but everyone loves innocence when they find it.

For no particular reason this time through the Book of Mormon my understanding has been particularly drawn to the historical  narrative of the Book of Mormon as an authentic ancient text.  In that light, I am increasingly convinced that what we have is an extremely typical rise-and-fall arc that many other cultures and civilizations have gone through.

We’ve already covered evidence that the Nephites had a ‘modernity.’  The evidence that they had a fall is blatantly obvious, no one will disagree with that.

But still it isn’t immediately apparent reading the text that we are going through an overall Rise-and-Fall arc and I think there are three reasons why.

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OK, maybe not, but also maybe.  I’m going to vent.

I’ve got a teenager or two at EFY right now.  Well, not EFY, the other one.  FSY.  One of my girls is a swimmer, pretty good at it despite the fact that her parents will not pay for camps or coaches or much travel or anything.  She just had a swim coach from out of state who was in town for another reason hear about her and ask to meet with her for free.  He gave her some extremely specific tips on her starts and her turns and some very specific practice routines to develop those tips.  She was excited.  That was last week.  Now she’s at FSY.  They have free time built into the schedule and are encouraged to use it for exercise among other things so no problem.  They are staying at a small college and the college’s pool happens to be across the parking lot from the dorm she’s in.  We looked up the lap pool hours and sent her with the cash and ID and everything else the pool wanted for general admission.  Some of the pool hours coincided with free time.  The first day she’s call us.  They won’t let me, she says.

So we call them.  Not permitted, they say.  Liability.  I roll my eyes.  Fine, can I just sent you permission in writing or is there some kind of form.  Nope, they say.  The Legal Department has forbidden it.  Your only choice is to withdraw her from FSY.  Then the camp director had the blasphemous insolence to tell us that our daughter would be blessed by the Lord for complying with the dictates of the Legal Department, God rot his tongue.

There is no God but liability and the legal department is his prophet.

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