Leaderboard

Current events warrant a little understanding. 1. Iranian backed militias have been causing trouble in Iraq. 2. US airstrikes against these militias killed some of them. 3. Iranians stirring up trouble in Iraq provoke folks to mount a serious attack on our Embassy. Like a several day long attack with fire and explosions and rioting. Watch some of the available video. See some of the aftermath pictures. Read the Wiki. No American deaths. 4. Remember back to what happened in Benghazi under Sec of State Hillary Clinton's watch, where the ambassador and several other Americans were killed. Remember one of Trump's campaign promises was no more Benghazis. 5. Trump orders the strike that kills Iranian military commander, and then tweets an American flag. Something to consider: If you hear folks worrying about Trump rushing to war by killing Iranian Quds force commander Major General Soleimani, ask yourself why he was in Iraq trying to kill Americans. Ask yourself what a good word is to describe a situation where a nation sends a military force into another nation to attack a third nation's embassy. Then ask yourself whether "unprovoked rushing into war" are good words to describe what Trump is doing. Yes, it's an election year. Yes, one tactic to win re-election is to start a big melodramatic war to occupy the nation's attention. Ask yourself if that's what is happening here, or if something else is happening.

FYI, the ward boundaries into which we moved 20 years ago, now holds like 8 wards in 2 different stakes. True, much is due to population growth and new children born, but a lot of it is due to new member baptisms. So it's not the best idea to take your (or my) experience and paint it too generally across a global church.

Question: @GaleG is your account actually authored by Jim, @theplains?

Question: @theplains, 'Jim', are you the actual person behind the @GaleG account? We read in the CTR Primary Manual:

@theplains, the only stupid questions in this world are ones that the asker has no interest in the answers. When a person habitually asks a question and then disappears, that's showing a lack of real interest, real questioning, or any sincerity. And it's just a waste of time.

1. What @Vort said. Also, in a loose sense, Revelation 19:10. 2. What @Vort said. 3. Deuteronomy 18:22 is a starting point. But we should be aware that we are often poor judges of whether a prophecy was supposed to be absolute versus conditional; and whether a prophecy has in fact come to pass (which is why when Jonah thought his prophecy had failed, he sat under a tree and waited for death). Fundamentally we look to the Spirit of God to confirm the truth of a prophet’s words—James 1:5, Galatians 5:22-23, etc. 4. We don’t, and can’t, have “the full counsel of God” in any single book or group of books. John 21:25. God was quite capable of revealing Himself to non-prophets via the Holy Spirit in Old Testament times to inspire them to action (see, e.g., 2 Chr 32:31–no point in mentioning God having “left” a king unless God had ordinarily been in communion with him. Other occasionally/ inspired Old Testament non-prophets include Pharoah, Rahab, Ruth and Naomi, Nebuchadnezzar, Cyrus, Esther and Mordecai, and so on.) Even though post-Mosaic Israelites had both scripture and some measure of direct inspiration from God, God still sent prophets to Israel—because both the whisperings of the Spirit and the canon of scripture are subject to being innocently misinterpreted (2 Peter 1:20-21, 2 Peter 3:15-16) or even wrested out of context by the insincere and/or deceivers (Psalm 56:5, Matthew 24:24). Common sense also tells us the same thing that it told Joseph Smith: that if the canon of scripture and an easily-understood, readily-accessible voice of God were so unambiguous and all-encompassing, then there shouldn’t be a plethora of conflicting “Christian” sects. Any statistician tells you that more data points allows you to create a more reliable “best fit” extrapolation; any navigator will tell you that the more landmarks you have from which to take bearings, the more accurate your “fix” will ultimately be. The Lord used and uses the same principle. Living prophets provide us with another data point, another landmark, to help us verify that we are correctly applying the truths we already have from other sources (not to mention preparing us for future contingencies that either aren’t clearly laid out in scripture, or that the Spirit can’t warn us about because we have closed our mind to those possibilities). 5. The prophet knows nothing that I can’t know. But (due to maturity, life experience, study, authority, and individual revelation) he many things that I don’t (yet) know; about a variety of gospel-related topics both sublime and relatively trivial. As I grow in the Gospel, hopefully the gap between what the prophet knows and what I know will consistently shrink.

My response I: 1. A prophet speaks for God. Prophecy is the act of speaking in God's place. 2. Based on the Bible, prophets speak for God. 3. I check (i) whether the person has any authority for such a remarkable claim and (ii) whether the person's teachings accord with those revelations I have already received from unimpeachable sources. 4. This is no question at all. It is a lie parading as a question. The best response is something like, "Why did God ever have prophets? The fundamental relationship between God and man did not suddenly change at Christ's atonement. Or are you saying that God is a changeable God?" 5. The prophet has revealed to him the mind of Christ, which he can then teach to you, which makes you have more of the mind of Christ instead of continuing in your abased, prideful, foolish condition. My response II: While the first three questions are reasonable enough, it's clear to me that this person is not in a state to receive the gospel. She thinks she already knows the truth. Her questions are not designed to deepen her understanding, but to build the philosophical underpinnings of her resistance to the gospel teachings that the missionaries bring. Until she changes her heart, you and the missionaries are probably wasting your time with her as she pits her feeble understanding of things against the truths you are trying to teach. Such prideful idiocy is not and cannot be changed by having the stronger argument or knowing your scriptures better than she thinks she knows hers. A hard heart is never open to the truths of the Spirit. If this is truly her attitude, I would advise you to strongly consider not wasting your time. My response III: Check her reaction in casual conversation to the mention of "Jim theplains" and "GaleG".

We enjoy comics at our home. Here is a glance at a new one that we look forward to seeing someday:

Good things to aspire to.

[Stage whisper] Actually, he was born out of wedlock; but we don’t like to talk about it. (Sorry, couldn’t resist the bad dad joke.) On a more solemn note: rejecting any aspiration to righteousness, is not an improvement over hypocrisy. It just means we aren’t even bothering any more with trying to teach the rising generation to improve themselves. It’s a (literally) damnable condition for any society to find themselves in.

Your understanding is obviously wrong, because it makes things look like they're not Trump's fault. I cannot believe that even the refrain "I Blame Bush" has been drowned out over the last three years by the shrill hatred directed toward Trump. I may well yet regret any positive feelings I have had toward Trump; but when the devil's media lapdogs unanimously condemn and vilify Trump, even while some of them praise terrorists and such, that evidence is simply too strong for me to dismiss out of hand. What Trump has said I often find petulant, childish, embarrassing, and sometimes harmful. What Trump has done, on the other hand, has mostly been better than I could have imagined, even with a Republican candidate I would have preferred. As Joe Paterno used to say, nothing succeeds like success.

My understanding is that we were fully out of Iraq (other than embassy security, maybe some isolated training missions, etc) for a time around 2010-ish; and then they asked us to come back in to save them from ISIS and the Obama administration indulged them. Otherwise: yes, we’ve been trying to keep the lid on that region for fifty years because *everyone* (not just us) needed a stable energy supply; and now that we don’t need their oil anymore (thanks, fracking!) I’m happy to walk away from it all, embargo the heck out of the petrostates, and let nature take its course. Except that a) I like Israel for the fact that it’s about the only nation in the region that spent the last few decades actually building stuff rather than exploiting its own people and blaming America for it; so I don’t mind launching a few dozen cruise missiles every now and then if it keeps them safe; and b) we still gotta have embassies out there; and if our embassies get attacked, I’m all for retaliating by killing the planners and perpetrators of the attack. If some of the perpetrators happen to be agents of a nation-state . . . Too bad for them. But what Trump is thinking sending 3,000 more soldiers (or whatever the number is) out there, I don’t know. It seems to me that the only ground we need to hold is our own embassy compound; and I can’t imagine it would take that many people.

Hmm. A website that says “Please tell us your new name and the date you received it”, projects ever-downward trends in all pertinent membership figures for the next forty years? I’m shocked. Shocked, I tell you!

I don't think you are the only one. I find myself extremely tired on Sundays. I think we go go go go go so much during the week that Sundays allow us that time to slow down. I think my body says...you've had enough this week. You're tired.

I live outside of Utah. At close of the year the units in our stake will average about 5 convert baptisms each.

And if it was... so what? The whole purpose of the creation of the earth was to test each and every one of us to see if we will do all things. If some people want to use others as a excuse to not follow the Lord.. well test complete then. God is the perfect judge and he will absolutely will hold those accountable who chose to be offensive to others... However he will not accept "others offended me" as an acceptable reason for turning their back on him.

I’m not sure “good relations” is the be-all, end-all here. Britain and Germany enjoyed excellent relations after the Munich Pact was finalized—but eventually the roof fell in, because the simple facts were that Hitler was a bad guy and the Nazis were a bunch of bloodthirsty degenerates. I don’t know if that’s true of the Iranians. I do know that we’ve been hearing about these fantastical “moderate Iranians” for twenty years now; but nothing’s really changed—Iran is officially still dreaming of killing Americans pushing all the the Jews into the sea. And whatever our other differences are—IF the Trump administration and the Pentagon are telling us the truth (yes, big “IF” there), then Iran just orchestrated an attack against an American embassy on Iraqi soil. I’m sorry, but regardless of what your disputes have been—embassy attacks are by their nature an an act of war. I don’t know if retaliation is the smart thing to do; but from a morality standpoint, it seems quite justifiable. Iran’s attacks so far may have been too incompetent to rack up a body count—but they are certainly playing for keeps, and for whatever reason (maybe related to the pallets of cash the previous administration sent them?) they don’t (or didn’t) think that we are.

In addition to the Word of Wisdom, Gospel Principles says "Our prophets have told us that we should not shop, hunt, fish, attend sports events, or participate in similar activities on that day." I'm not LDS myself, but if I were, I'd say it is important to follow the guidance given by prophets if it is supported by the scriptures. But personally, I would go on a Sunday fishing trip to share the gospel with a non-believer if that opportunity arose. Jim

Yea, what's next, still reading comics and playing Dungeons and Dragons?

Yes. Thanks.

Up at the altar there are souls...some are repenting, others are quietly joyful. There are tears, holy silence, and a lady in the corner is even laughing. A deacon is concerned by the seeming irreverence of this woman and goes over to whisper in the pastor's ear. He responds quietly, yet with force, "Leave that woman alone. I know her backstory. She has never laughed in her life and tonight she's experienced the joy of the Lord." Meanwhile, in the back are a group of teens snickering about how fake the church is, and how there's nothing happening up front except a bunch of showboating: Sophomoric cynicism that feigns to be insightful and honest commentary.

What I really dislike about articles (and writers) such as these is the bubble they live under. They have zero awareness that the Church extends beyond the streets of Utah. Saying this is "Mormon Culture" is as ignorant as Bernie Sanders saying Native Americans represent environmentalism...

Any kind of "social culture" CAN be changed, and should be; especially if it is not helpful. M.

And vice versa - breakfast foods CAN be eaten at dinner. 😊 M.

Nope.

@GaleG, are you actually interested in the answers to these questions?

@clbent04 I've noticed there's some questions you haven't asked. Have you already gotten answers for them? Question: What do you like most about attending church? What do you like most about your service in the Church? Question: How did you gain a testimony (either of the Book of Mormon, or the Church, or even of the Savior)? Question: What's it like to be moved upon by the Holy Ghost? Question: How does the Lord answer your prayers? Question: Was Joseph Smith a prophet?

Perish the thought. Why would I spend hours of my life doing something fun and enjoyable when I can sit at home staring at the wall and patting myself on the back about how I don't soil myself with children's interests?😉