Vort

Oh, don't apologize. It was a joke. You were right to call me on my misattribution. I'm just slightly embarrassed that I typed that off without, you know, thinking about it.

Not to get out in the weeds, because I've always been happy to allow the couplet to stand alone and let the Spirit dictate meaning as needed, but the model of either-wicked-man-or-perfect-God is a false dichotomy. Christ was like us, yet still and always the Eternal God and Father of heaven and earth.

Oh, yeah, shame me for my misattribution. Very nice. As Joseph Smith said in General Conference, "Stop it."

What would God possibly need to be saved from? He is a perfect, all-powerful being with no sin or stain, the true Master and Creator of the entire universe. To borrow Emma Smith's phrase, the thought makes reason stare.

.

And now President Nelson is all in on Think Celestial. D'oh!

Infant boys were circumcised on the eight day—that is, at seven days old, one week from their birth. Such one-based counting appears to be the standard in all or at least most ancient societies.

No. Laws are according to kingdoms. The celestial law exists only in the celestial kingdom, among those who inherit that kingdom. There is, for example, no eternal marriage outside the law of the celestial kingdom. It does not exist among the non-exalted, for that is the meaning of exaltation. We think of "sin" as something written on a list of do-nots, or perhaps something lacking from our personal list of should-dos. We are wrong. Sin is not the mere transgression of something someone said (even God). Sin means doing something false, something that transgresses the basic, fundamental moral physics of the universe itself. By "transgresses", I don't mean doing something impossible, because that is (by definition) impossible. Rather, to commit Moral Action A and then expect that the result will be Consequence B is sin. The consequence of Moral Action A is always Consequence A, never Consequence B. Choosing to commit Moral Action A, knowing full well that the consequence will be Consequence A (assumed to be something negative or destructive), is also sin, sin of a greater magnitude, the sinning of the damned. Those who live in terrestrial glory do so exactly because they abide a terrestrial law. Those who dwell in telestial conditions are allowed to do so because they obey telestial law. Those who will not conform to law are left to abide in a kingdom of no glory whatsoever, because being utterly lawless, they are incapable of receiving any glory to any degree. And the celestial will abide a celestial law, with the exalted receiving God's own fulness.

"Pleasant palaces" refers to various public buildings used by privileged government functionaries and the higher classes of people in Babylon (as well as other ancient empires). Those outward signs of opulence (and therefore decadence) will be left prey to savage beasts and monsters. I believe that's the general gist of things at this point of Isaiah.

Been a while since I saw that.

By the way, all or most of Nibley's lectures are available in print. Most of his best lectures were eventually incorporated into his books, anyway. But I would still advise you to listen to the man speak. He was a gifted speaker, just fascinating to listen to, and his delivery added significantly to the information he conveyed.

A great place to start is a 30-part lecture series Nibley gave over KSL radio in 1954, called "Time Vindicates the Prophets". Each bite-sized lecture is only ten to fifteen minutes long, and just fascinating. Here is the intro: Then there are thirty lectures after that. The final one is certainly the best, but you should listen to them all in order. After whetting your appetite with "Time Vindicates the Prophets", go to Nibley's speeches site on byu.edu (https://speeches.byu.edu/speakers/hugh-nibley/) and start listening. The featured talk there is his classic "Leaders and Managers", which is most certainly worth hearing, one of the really great commencement speeches you will ever hear (at least I assume it was a commencement speech), but every talk is a gem. Every one, literally. Even the not-so-good talks are good, and most are excellent. (The BYU site "Leaders and Managers" video also features a young BYU president Jeff Holland offering an introduction, which is kind of fun.)

Hugh Nibley, a late and eminent LDS scholar that many on this forum are familiar with, used to talk about how the ancient Christians in the early post-apostolic period would say that the devil likes to work with bottles only half-full of food or drink. A full bottle doesn't have any room for bugs or mold, and an empty bottle doesn't have anything to spoil. So the devil likes half-full bottles. Maybe the danger we as Christians experience is when we get half-full. Just enough understanding and even inspiration to be dangerous, but not enough to stay out of trouble.

I agree. That said, I am not utilizing the extra Sunday hour at home as I should be. So I admit that up front. I still miss the extra time in Church, now taken away from the precious few hours I used to have every week to fraternize with the best people outside of my own family that I know, the people I admire most and seek most to emulate.

What a kind gesture.

What exactly do you think Putin can do to materially help Trump in the election? And what exactly (or even approximately) do you think Trump would be willing to do to help Putin win a wildly unpopular war?

Man. Some people's children.

You got it.

Is tattooing prohibited by divine commandment? Not as far as I know. Is tattooing offensive in the sight of God? I don't know; you'd have to ask God. Is decorative tattooing generally a good idea? I think it is not. External "vanity" body modifications—that is, artificial changes designed to draw attention (the literal definition of immodesty) or artificially enhance the perception of sexually related characteristics (e.g. breast augmentation in an otherwise healthy breast, buttocks augmentation, lip augmentation, liposuction, etc.) that do nothing to boost physical health or functionality—seem to me a sort of violation or pollution of the body God has given us stewardship over. Perhaps "pollution" is too strong a word, but something along those lines. That said, I would not criticize anyone, including a fellow Saint, for doing such a thing. It's not my affair. If I were tasked with determining a person's moral worthiness, there are much bigger fish to fry than whether they had a lip job* or got a tattoo. *What is with the silicone lip inflation fad? Not sure I've ever seen anything more nonsensical, and I'm pretty sure I have not seen any "vanity surgery" that so reliably leaves the patient disfigured. It's an amazing thing to me that such is even legal, though if doctors are allowed to castrate or otherwise sexually mutilate children, I don't see why they wouldn't be allowed to make a consenting adult look like a duck/human hybrid experiment gone catastrophically wrong.

My grandmother's older sister was born seven months into her parents' marriage. (They later divorced.) The older sister was, of course, "premature". My grandmother enjoyed teasing her sister by saying that their parents' marriage was "postmature". Her father found this funny, but her older sister did not. I don't think she ever dared make this comment in front of her mother.

I had already realized the importance of the Saints gathering together every week, but the covid idiocy really brought that home.

Tomorrow. At least, that's the reading schedule Zil came up with.

Education is indeed no guarantee of intelligence, nor religious position of piety.

One more sort of philosophical item. In any serious reading of a book, you choose how you approach it. With a novel, for example, you usually approach it as a retelling of a sort of history, even if it's a fiction novel. With a textbook, you approach it as a tutorial and a reference. The Book of Mormon could be approached in many ways. Two of the most obvious ways are: (1) as an actual, literal history of a fallen people, with all the flaws, misstatements, and niggling grammatical and continuity errors that such an authentic history unavoidably contains; and, (2) as a work of 19th-century American frontier-produced fiction. As a non-Latter-day Saint, Jamie, your first instinct might be to approach the Book of Mormon in the latter way. Let me suggest that, for the sake of this reading, you temporarily set aside your opinions or reservations about historicity, and read the book as if you accept it at face value, on its own terms, as an actual history of a fallen people. My reason for suggesting this is that if you are constantly questioning and wondering where Joseph Smith (or whichever purported author you choose to assign credit to) got this or that idea or came up with such-and-such a notion, you will almost certainly miss much of the "LDS experience" in reading the Book of Mormon. Suspend your disbelief, so to speak, and accept the book on its own terms. In doing so, I believe your experience will be more authentic to how Latter-day Saints read the book, more engaging on a personal level, and in the end a more satisfying experience.