Who are these dashed people one sees everywhere on the TV these days?  The woman of indeterminate pronunciation and the elderly bridge player fellow?  I dare say that the marked American cussedness is more than a little marked.  In fine fettle, as it were.

On the sweetness of your second primary program this year.

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In Sunday School this Sunday someone summarized 3 Nephi 8-10 as “Christ punishes and pleads.”  There is a magnificent oratorio waiting to be written from those chapters culminating in Christ’s appearance.

In 3 Ne 11 (insight not my own), the people first hear, then see, then touch.  Amazingly physical.  Amazingly bodily.  Appropriate for the resurrected Lord.

Source: Area Seventies page at ChurchofJesusChrist.org
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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.

The grandmaster is back.

As both Zen and Bruce Charlton have pointed out here, having low birth rates is bad but having low birth rates that are dropping is worse.

It’s bad if your expenses exceed your income.  Its worse if every year your income gets smaller and your expenses get larger.

Here’s the bottom line.  Based on recent trends, the really low American birth rates are declining by about 1.5% per year.  Based on recent trends, the low LDS birth rates are declining by 3.43% per year.

At these rates of decline, it will take America 52  years to get to the catastrophically low unprecedented birthrates of South Korea.  YtSK=52.  For the LDS, 34 years.  YtSK=34.

However, there is some small glimmer of hope in the LDS numbers for the last couple of years.

(Figures are based on limited data, should be treated as ballpark and directional only).

From here.  There was another drop in 2023.  The number of births per is now 54.4.

The  implication is that every year more people look around and decide to have less children, or no children.

I don’t believe we will continue to decline at the same rate.  It will slow once we catch up (catch down?) to the Gentile population.  The gospel is true and beautiful but for many LDS in First World countries the fruits of the gospel are increasingly only in areas that are unmeasurable and intangible.

Analysis below for those who are interested.

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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)

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Success is dangerous, but good.

Elder Bednar this conference taught that success is a challenge.  Our choices can make it a curse.

He was talking about the Book of Mormon, and of course this is a very Book of Mormon viewpoint.  The promised land is blessed and cursed and the blessing and the cursing are the same.  At one level, the blessing and the cursing are that here the people will get what they deserve.  At an even deeper level, the blessing and the cursing are that any little bit of righteousness will get rewarded with success, and our choices too often make success into a curse.

Whether we live in the promised land or not, I believe we Saints have the same blessing and cursing.  If we try, we will often succeed–but that’s dangerous.

Many of us try to avoid the danger.  Probably we shouldn’t.  Elder Bednar’s point isn’t that success is bad.  It’s that success is a challenge.

Success with humility is godliness.

My brain is trying to be subversive again.  I bear it with patience.

A few days ago I was studying in 3rd Nephi when the brain popped up to say that Christ’s injunction not to contend sure hits differently when you realize he had just finished destroying the 2/3s of the population that his audience would have needed to contend with.  Hard filter = “no contention!”  From that perspective saying contention is of the devil is like saying wickedness or opposition is of the devil, or the Gadianton robbers were of the devil (which they were).

I don’t 100% agree.  There’s some truth to it, but this last conference had several messages about avoiding contention that shows it goes beyond just the narrow confines of the in-group.  What I do think is that many of us, including me, spend a lot of time thinking about hard task of avoiding contention in the abstract with people who are our opponents or even in the scriptural language our “enemies,” while we are failing at the easy task within the in-group: not being contentious with the people in our family or ward.    I’m not sure that being civil across big partisan divides matters too much if you are quarrelsome and nasty to your kids or your cousins or the Sunday School 1st counselor.

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.