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Update He was baptised about an hour ago. I assisted with his confirmation. A new journey begins.

I agree with Vort’s understanding. Most scriptural references of angelic visitations are to the prophets or leaders, which in my mind would be a Priesthood assignment. However, when I read many of my family history events, or have talked to those who have had angelic visitors, many of the angelic visitors are female—usually a deceased family member.

I don't know how to respond to Brigham Young's assertion that immortal beings continue to learn. in Lectures on Faith, it is well argued that if we didn't have assurance of God's omniscience and omnipotence, we couldn't have faith it God's ability to save or exalt us - after all, if He doesn't know all and have all power, how does He know that he can exalt us - for all He knows, there is something that will stop him, or someone more powerful that will interfere. Of course, one can argue that God's omniscience and omnipotence are both within his sphere, and that he may well be increasing in knowledge and power by advancing to higher spheres: Revelation 2:17 D&C 130:10-11 This white stone (the phrasing may make it seem like there are two, but I think the combination of both references clarifies that it's one) will reveal to those in the celestial kingdom "things pertaining to a higher order of kingdoms" - What!? Yep, that's saying there are kingdoms higher than the celestial - at least, I don't know what else it could be saying. Now, I think it's worth noting that only those in the celestial kingdom receive this. Therefore, I don't believe it can be argued that those in the terrestrial or telestial may also advance. Indeed, every indication is that they cannot. What's more, there's every indication that only those in the highest degree of the celestial kingdom have any chance at advancing, if anyone does. So then we go back to the quote from the Teachings of the Prophet Joseph Smith - about the Savior working out his kingdom and giving it to the Father. Perhaps this constitutes the Father moving into a higher order of kingdom. That would correspond to only those in the highest degree of the celestial kingdom advancing - since only they have increase / continuation of the seeds. Eventually, the "round" will repeat, and the exalted will present their kingdoms to the Savior, etc. etc. This leaves the lower levels of the celestial kingdom, and the terrestrial and telestial kingdoms stagnant while one of your quotes has those in outer darkness devolving back into raw material and loss of identity (difficult to reconcile with the teaching that resurrection is a permanent, unchangeable state; also something that I think would be dangerous to preach in our day and age when depression and despair are prevalent enough that those in such states might find a sort of hope in the idea of an eternal cessation of consciousness and therefore act to "obtain" said cessation).

On a side note, we went to the Paris Temple last month while we were visiting Paris and did a session. Beautiful temple.

Sunday21, you ask some great questions and bring up an important stumbling block for members, both new and seasoned: How do we understand the Book of Mormon? The short, facile answer is "By reading it lots and lots". This is perfectly true, but there must be a way to sort of kickstart the process. This post is my attempt to introduce you to the Book of Mormon, so that when you read it, you have some hooks to hang various things on. I'm going to give you a very short rundown of what is contained in the Book of Mormon. But first, I'm going to tell you The Big Secret about the Book of Mormon, possibly the single biggest thing that readers new to the Book of Mormon don't understand and find confusing. The Big Secret The first fifty or hundred pages of the Book of Mormon are lost. (Read Doctrine & Covenants 10 for more information about this event, which was so horrible that Joseph Smith thought he was to be eternally damned because of it. In brief, Joseph allowed a man named Martin Harris to "borrow" the first 116 written pages translated from the Book of Mormon plates to show to his wife. The pages were never seen again. People cried, heads rolled -- figuratively -- and a great deal of repentance and pain were gone through.) This means when we start reading the Book of Mormon, we're coming in during the second act, and no one is around to tell us what went on in the first act. So let me tell you, very roughly speaking, what went on in the first act. Here is a rough paraphrase of how the first 116 pages might have started: Hi there, reader. My name is Mormon. I am living about 360 years after the birth of Jesus Christ, but I probably won't be living all that much longer. I am among the last survivors of a people called the "Nephites". Our ancestors came out of the city of Jerusalem almost a thousand years ago, and have been largely a righteous people until a generation or two before I was born. Now they are all corrupt and will very shortly be wiped out. The Nephites have had many prophets during the past 1000 years, and these prophets have kept extensive records of the people's doings and the prophecies given to them. God has commanded me to take this entire, huge set of records and distill it down to a much shorter book. He has shown me that you who read it, living far in my future, will encounter many problems that the lessons of my people can help you with. So I am going to abridge Nephite history down to a much shorter narrative. The first writing I will abridge is that of our first father, Lehi, who came out from Jerusalem. The record I am abridging was kept by Lehi and his faithful son, Nephi, whose descendants we are. Here is what they had to say... Then, at the end of the Book of Lehi, Mormon might have added something like: ...And that covers my abridgment of the history of my people from the time Lehi left Jerusalem up until the reign of king Benjamin, a period of about 450 years. There is another short record of this same period, kept by Nephi himself, his brother Jacob, and many of Jacob's descendants. I am going to go find that book right now and put it in my record. At that point, you would have started reading 1 Nephi, the next thing in Mormon's record. Alas, those first pages are forever lost, so we must resign ourselves to coming in after the play has begun. But 1 Nephi through Omni actually cover the very same period that Mormon already abridged, so while we miss a lot of important details, we have the essential history covered, along with many precious teachings from Lehi, Nephi, Jacob, and other prophets.

Some time back, I read about how radioactive isotopes of gold could be used for various nefarious purposes such as "dirty" bombs. A couple of months ago, I got curious about the decay chains leading to regular gold (not a radioactive isotope). I don't know much about that, so I did what anyone would do and googled "decay chain gold" or something of the sort. I think I asked ChatGPT, too. My investigation led to an amazing discovery: There are no radioactive decay chains that lead to the production of stable gold. There is in fact only one stable isotope of gold, 197Au. That's regular gold. Any other isotope of gold decays away quickly; the longest-lived radioactive gold isotope is 195Au, with a half-life of about six months. So if you had a coin made of 195Au (which would be super-dangerous and quickly kill you from radioactivity), in five years only 1/1000th of that coin would still be gold. Five years after that, there would be only a millionth of the original gold isotope left. Within one human lifetime, all of that "gold", down to the last atom, would simply go away. And none of it would ever transmute into regular, stable gold. Like leprechaun gold, it would be lethal and evanescent. In fact, other than atom-by-atom transmutation of platinum or iridium into gold inside a nuclear reactor (and what a shameful waste of platinum or iridium that would be!), there is no other way of creating gold than how it is created in dying stars. Gold is created in the heart of stars, and only there. All of the gold you have ever seen has been created this way. There is no substitute method, no shortcut, no clever way to get around that. To the dismay of the alchemist, you can't decay away some type of radioactive lead to make gold. Lead can never be gold. I trust the spiritual parallels are obvious, so I won't belabor the point. So there's your Sunday thought. Gold is created only the heart of stars. Don't think you can get it some other way. You can't.

Yay!

At the request of a few people, I wrote this thread up into a document. I have not updated it in years, and I don't pretend it's anything but a reflection of my understanding from several years back. But for what it's worth, here is the link. The Book of Mormon made understandable

You will need to reach out to the Paris Temple staff with these questions.

Perhaps a piece on where have all the Easter dresses gone. Society has become very casual and even sloppy in it's attire.

Note that the template could be something as simple as a prototype of the desired dimensions, hammered out to a desired thickness, and with holes for the rings in a standard position. Nothing fancy, no plate casting needed or anything of the sort.

So, today while finishing my study of the intro material to the Book of Mormon, I went down a rabbit hole, and discovered things that lead me to this conclusion (supports to follow): The 116 pages were entirely the book of Lehi. That's what was lost. But Joseph had translated more than those 116 pages. The "more" was not lost. But it also was not used to produce the Book of Mormon. Rather, it was all replaced by the translation of the small plates. Whatever happened to this additional part, which Joseph had not given over with the 116 pages, I have no idea, and have never even heard mention of. I would guess they were destroyed so they couldn't be used as the 116 pages might have been. Supports: That quote @Vort posted, from History of the Church, volume 1, page 56, footnotes: D&C 10:41 (says the same thing) Section 10 pretty clearly delineates this in my mind - there are the pages "which have gone out of your hands" and "that which you have translated, which you have retained" - two different groupings. The large plates, which Mormon abridged, would have contained: Lehi The equivalent of 1 Nephi through Omni (but as history and from the perspective of the kings rather than the prophets) Mosiah through 4 Nephi My reading of "which you have retained", suggests Joseph Smith translated to some point in bullet #2 (likely to the end of it, given the rest of verse 41). Now, I suppose one can argue that "which you have retained" refers to some other thing, but I don't think so. I recommend reading the entry in History of the Church and all of D&C 10 before deciding what you think. (My rabbit hole also makes me believe that Mormon wrote the Words of Mormon on Nephi's small plates (even if he had to make a new plate to do it, though there's no evidence he did). Some verses in Words of Mormon have him referring to "these plates" in a way that suggests they're not just the small plates, but that he's writing on them.)

“The book of Revelations is one of the plainest books God ever caused to be written.” Joseph Smith Jr https://www.josephsmithpapers.org/paper-summary/history-1838-1856-volume-d-1-1-august-1842-1-july-1843/166 What some people perceive as confusing or blurry, can be clear as day for others. The spirit of prophecy probably helps.

Along with several others on this forum I recently re-read the thread you wrote, I think back in 2016, for Sunday21 explaining/summarising the Book of Mormon. I also noted the great many highly appreciative comments of your work.

By definition, angels are messengers from God. Angelic visitations recorded in scripture are almost always to prophets and devout believers (with Paul, Alma, and the sons of Mosiah standing out as stark exceptions). These visitations seem to me to have the quality of a Priesthood assignment, which might therefore be considered a Priesthood responsibility. This would explain why the angels we read of in these visitations are male.

The proper use of iridium: (full disclosure: they say nibs aren't tipped with iridium any more, even though most Chinese nibs claim to be - but then those same Chinese nibs usually say "IRIDIUM POINT GERMANY" on them - I suspect the nibs on the left and right are Chinese. The one in the middle is not and likely has an iridium tip.) (I'm not aware of any fountain pens with platinum(-plated) nibs, but here's one with platinum-plated trim: There. Now everyone knows the proper uses for platinum and iridium. (Let me know if you'd like to see palladium too. )

It's the referring to it as a permanent trait that I find random and strange. But like I said...if you mean God's way isn't to make things permanently blurry for his children who are faithful then.... yeah. Obviously.