Leaderboard

Nine years ago, President Eyring offered this thought: I heard President Spencer W. Kimball, in a session of conference, ask that God would give him mountains to climb. He said: “There are great challenges ahead of us, giant opportunities to be met. I welcome that exciting prospect and feel to say to the Lord, humbly, ‘Give me this mountain,’ give me these challenges.”1 My heart was stirred, knowing, as I did, some of the challenges and adversity he had already faced. I felt a desire to be more like him, a valiant servant of God. So one night I prayed for a test to prove my courage. I can remember it vividly. In the evening I knelt in my bedroom with a faith that seemed almost to fill my heart to bursting. Within a day or two my prayer was answered. The hardest trial of my life [up to that time] surprised and humbled me. It provided me a twofold lesson. First, I had clear proof that God heard and answered my prayer of faith. But second, I began a tutorial that still goes on to learn about why I felt with such confidence that night that a great blessing could come from adversity to more than compensate for any cost. In our most recent General Conference, President Eyring offered this: Now, even with such blessings promised through tribulation, we do not seek tribulation. In the mortal experience, we will have ample opportunity to prove ourselves, to pass tests hard enough to become ever more like the Savior and our Heavenly Father. President Eyring often speaks of enduring trials well. In the above examples, perhaps his opinion changed in the span of time between his younger self and his present state. In any case, I agree with the elder Elder Eyring. Tribulations will come. We do not need to seek them out. For myself, I try to avoid tribulation, even praying at times to avoid such, knowing full well that a loving Father will bless me with trials as he sees fit. I don't need to pray for trials. As Manzoni put into the mouth of Lucia in The Betrothed, "I did not go looking for trouble; it's trouble that came for me." Actually, the whole passage is worth reading. (The whole book, if you have taste for early 19th century classic Italian literature.) "I have learned," [Renzo] said, "not to get involved in riots; I have learned not to preach in the square; I have learned to watch whom I speak with; I've learned not to drink too much; I've learned not to lift the doorknocker when there are people inside with hot heads; I've learned not to kick a doorbell before thinking what could happen; and a hundred other things." But Lucia, although she did not find this doctrine wrong in itself, was not satisfied; it seemed to her, although confusedly, as if something were missing. After hearing the same song repeated, and wondering every time-- "And I?" -- she said one day to her moralist, "What do you think we have learned? I did not go looking for trouble; it's trouble that came for me. Unless I mean," she added, smiling softly, "that my mistake was to love you, and promise myself to you." After a long debate and thinking it over together, they concluded that troubles come rather often, because there are causes for them; but that the most careful and innocent behavior was not enough to keep them far away; and that when they come, with or without fault, the faith in God makes them easier to bear, and makes them useful for a better life. This conclusion, although found by poor people, seems so fair that we have decided to put it here, as the juice of the the entire story.

If you had taken a moment to perform a simple search of the Book of Mormon you could have quickly answered your own questions. While on the Church website, I searched the Book of Mormon for any use of the word Hebrew and I found the following statement from the prophet Mormon written a thousand years after the Lehites first arrived in America. 33 And if our plates had been sufficiently large we should have written in Hebrew; but the Hebrew hath been altered by us also; and if we could have written in Hebrew, behold, ye would have had no imperfection in our record. (Mormon 9) So yes, the Nephites could read and write a somewhat altered form of Hebrew one thousand years after their first arrival in America.

Remember also the Lord's prayer: "Lead us not into temptation, but deliver us from evil". Not "lead us into temptation so we can have the glory of resisting it".

Oh man it’s been a while since I’ve posted here, hasn’t it? A lot of things have changed. Just checking in to see how your all doing right now. As for me I’m doing alright. I’ve finally picked up the courage to talk to a missionary about joining the church but other than that not much going on.

A man wants to stop smoking. (Or drinking, or fornicating, or viewing porn, or getting up late, or swearing, or spending all day watching YouTube videos, or talking sharply to his wife, or beating his dog, or whatever.) He pleads, "Oh, Lord, this is bigger than I am. I know that Thou canst do all things. Remake me, Lord. Make me so that I don't smoke (drink, fornicate, swear, watch YouTube videos all day, etc.) any more. I'll try to do my part, but I won't do it very well. But I'll still try." After how many years of failing to overcome his trials is the man justified in saying, "I give up"? When I think of praying for trials, I think of the situation above. There may well be some people who are so spiritually advanced that they ought to pray to God for trials. I do not deny that such people may well exist, though that's so far above my current level that I find it hard to believe there are. But I don't deny there may well be. I know only that I am not one of them. I'm so busy trying to overcome my own weaknesses and failings that the very idea of asking God for more trials seems simultaneously horrific and laughable.

I am a fan of Star Trek Discovery but I do have some concerns about sifi in general that seems to be more unfounded and ridiculous fantasy than actual empirical science. For example I challenge any and everyone to provide even a single example that proves an intelligent species can evolve and not become extinct without binary (male and female) sex as the only means to preserve any and all intelligent species. We do know that many species have become extinct but it is most difficult to me to imagen an intelligent species (however intelligence is defined) that would deliberately more towards extinction through encouragement of same sex attraction or deliberate sexual alteration rendering individuals within that species sterile. I would think that such pseudo intelligence would discount such as unfit in the scientific notion of survival of the fittest. The Traveler

Nothing that any of us here can help with that but you might want to try and contact their help section. https://www.churchofjesuschrist.org/help/support?lang=eng

I am of a rather different mind, if you do not mind my explanation. I have become rather keen on the eternal principle of agency and divine covenants. In short I speculate that in the pre-existence that nothing was planned by G-d without our knowledge and full complicity. Part of our agency and divine covenants included a vale of forgetfulness during our mortal experience and as such; I have concluded that nothing in this life can or will happen to which we were ignorant of while all things were planned with our full approval in the pre-existence. I am of the mind that there is no reason to "blame" G-d for anything concerning this life but rather we need to recognize and have faith - not only in the wisdom of G-d but the principle of liberty and freedom to which we are appointed as his covenant children. I believe we are and will be what we have determined by our agency and endless time to be what we currently are and to become - and that we ought to respect that right of covenant to all of G-d's children - especially those that we personally encounter during our mortal experience to follow whatever path or journey they have determined - including those choices that seem of lessor eternal importance or value to ourselves. The Traveler

In the scriptures we often see the Lord commanding his people to flee. If he gives this command he has prepared a place for them to go. The saints simply need to be faithful and obedient. In rarer instances the Lord commands his people to fight. If he gives this command it will come with a promise that he will fight our battles. Thus the saints simply need to be faithful and obedient. No matter how it goes every prophet ever has been trying to prepare us for it. The only real question we should be asking is are we being faithful and obedient?

That article mentions an interesting distinction in the first sentence. I wonder how the Nauvoo legion compares.

Some pretty dang fascinating times, those. https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Mormon_Battalion

In all my studies over the years of church leaders on the topic of this country, never once has secession been suggested. Not once.

As @bytebear alludes, it was the gold plates (created and initially written by Nephi) that were written in “reformed Egyptian”). The brass plates to which Nephi and Lehi are referring in 1 Nephi 3:19 had been created by someone else and were (presumably) written in Hebrew. The Lehites may have initially brought other Hebrew documents from Jerusalem with them initially; but they were acutely aware that any physical records they possessed/created would, at some point, be lost (Jacob 4:1-4); the brass and gold plates being the only exceptions to this general rule (Alma 37:1-5).

And here I thought he was confusing "bias induced blindness" for "scornful red herrings".