Simple Utah Mormon Politics

I have been unable to find a quick reference for all of the passages from the Bible's book of Isaiah in the Book of Mormon.  So I put one together, below. I've also identified whether the Isaiah passages cited in the Book of Mormon come from the person known by scholars as "Deutero" (or Second) Isaiah.  Deutero-Isaiah comprises chapters 40-55 of Isaiah, and were likely written during the time of the Babylonian Captivity (587 BC to 538 BC). You've perhaps noticed that the Babylonian Captivity happened after Lehi and his family left the land of Jerusalem.  Does that cause problems for the authenticity of the Book of Mormon?  I don't think so, and I'll explain that in a later post.

A new channel has recently appeared on YouTube, entitled Mormon Leaks, whose goal it seems  is to do damage to the Church of Jesus Christ of Latter-day Saints.  What I've seen so far, however, will do much to improve the respect that people everywhere will have for the LDS Church and its leaders.  So, rather than believe the exaggerations and other criticisms leveled at the videos by detractors from the Church, I encourage you to simply watch them yourself. In this article, I will explain the high points of the episode entitled " In Which They Discuss Politics With Senator Gordon Smith ".  The presentation was filmed in February of 2009.

I wish I'd had my tape recorder!  One of the things that I love about my 25-plus years of employment at BYU is the opportunity to have regular discussions about Jesus Christ and his gospel. We had a really good one in our team meeting yesterday.  Here's what I learned/thought about during or as a result of that discussion.

Here are some interesting things that I thought of while studying Alma chapters 30 and 31 in the Book of Mormon for LDS Sunday School class last week.

In a 1984 LDS General Conference talk, Elder Ronald E. Poelman of the Quorum of Seventy made a statement that is exactly what the Church needed to hear at that time.  And it's especially something that would assuage a lot of anger between warring camps in the Church today.  Why don't we know about it? Because someone (it's not clear who) in the general leadership of the Church didn't like it, and required Poelman to re-deliver the talk with that part of the talk replaced by something different.

A Mormon historian recently said that we as Mormons need to "reconstruct the narrative" of the LDS Richard Bushman Church, because what we've been telling is somewhat of a sanitized version.  A believing member of the Church, Richard Bushman welcomes the healthy reconstruction that has been officially sanctioned by LDS Church leadership in recent years. Interestingly, another Mormon historian, nearly 35 years ago, attempted to do the same thing but was shut down when he suggested that the narrative needed to be reconstructed--to be told more accurately and openly.  Here is that story.

It would be difficult to find a religion that speaks more highly of women and their eternal potential than does the Church of Jesus Christ of Latter-day Saints.  Here are some of those teachings.