Vort

Then let me help you: LM: It pains me to say it, but good. What a horrible travesty that this bishop did not follow proper procedure... estradling: I am actually a bit pleased to see this type of story...Yes the bishop made a bad mistake. normaje: I am kinda appalled at some of the replies. The bishop was wrong and should have reported. It was not merely the alleged actions being condemned. The bishop himself was being called out as having done wrong.

Perhaps you're right, PC, but I don't think so. Consider the following in this thread: LM: It pains me to say it, but good. What a horrible travesty that this bishop did not follow proper procedure... estradling: I am actually a bit pleased to see this type of story...Yes the bishop made a bad mistake. normaje: I am kinda appalled at some of the replies. The bishop was wrong and should have reported. Those look to me very much like condemnation of this individual bishop.

Obvious though it may be, it's worth mentioning that Paul's use of "circumcision" refers to the whole idea of the Abrahamic covenant, a token of which was circumcision, and in effect means "adopting Judaism". The actual removal of foreskin is irrelevant, as I am sure Paul would have agreed with. The point is that anyone who thinks people *need* to circumcise their infant sons does not understand the nature of Christ's covenants, in a manner not too dissimilar to Mormon's condemnation of those who insist on the baptism of little children.

I had a dream a few months ago where I was at work taking a shower and someone locked my clothes and telephone in a locker, so I had to walk through the building naked with only a towel around my loins to the receptionist to tell her to call someone to unlock the locker for me. I even dreamed I wrote to LDS.net about it. What a nightmare. And it seemed so amazingly real! And the receptionist laughed when she saw me after that! How could this be? Hmmmm. But I take comfort in knowing it was just a bizarre nightmare.

Clearly, this is false. A non-existent god cannot answer any prayer. Ah, yes. The prehistorically ancient argument that, since evil exists, God cannot. I reject that argument as fuzzy-thinking nonsense, however passionately some may adhere to it.

Not so. I have no issues with either the laws of the land or the policies of the Church, only with those who rush to condemn a man based on incomplete reports. Especially when that man is an unpaid bishop striving to help people, we should be slow to condemn. Many here seem all too quick to condemn the bishop. THAT is the point. I don't see anywhere that the bishop has admitted to failing to follow the law or Church policies. My point is not to rail on you, LM. My point is that those who wish to condemn this bishop based on a news report are out of line and ought to knock it off. If you are one of those who have rushed to condemn, consider yourself included. Otherwise, don't.

This is my only point.

Unless those quotes were taken out of context. But we really don't know, do we? And who is the victim here, LM? The poor young woman who, in her innocence, was forcibly raped? Or the young man who is being falsely accused of rape by a vindictive or embarrassed ex-girlfriend? Surely you are not naive enough to assert that the latter never happens, or is even particularly rare. You mean the 70s and 80s AD? Not sure how you can be so precise about something that happened 2000 years ago. Because you surely cannot be suggesting that civilized humanity never considered these problems and acted on solving them before the 1970s or 1980s. It's amazing how your gift of clairvoyance allows you this insight, LM. Please forgive the rest of us who lack that particular gift. Perhaps you can understand why we non-ESP-ers refuse to jump to conclusions and urge others to follow that example.

And how do you know this? Are you the bishop? Or the young woman involved? Or clairvoyant? Or are you basing your assertion on the pitifully incomplete picture painted by a three-paragraph news blurb? Why should the law bother to make such a decision? It sounds like you have already tried and condemned the bishop for his misdeeds.

Well, that's not exactly true. We know a teenage girl's parents are claiming: [...] We know the parents called the sheriff's office and reported the alleged assault. We know Duchesne County sheriff's detective Dan Bruso claims: As I wrote: None of us knows what happened here. And that is exactly true. True. And Christ was charged with sedition. Charges do not make a man guilty, either in law or in reality. Again, true, but not relevant. The tongue-clucking and head-shaking rush to judgment against this bishop is outrageous.

FEBRUARY Young man: Bishop, Sally and I have been dating, and we, um, kissed and fooled around a little. But we didn't have sex! We didn't take our clothes off! Bishop: Billy, we need to talk about this. [...] MAY Young man: Bishop, I've been trying to do what we talked about. But Sally is really passionate, and last night she reached down my pants. I don't know what to do, bishop, because I really love her, but I know it's wrong for us to have sex. Bishop: Billy, I think we need to talk more about this. [...] JULY Young man: Bishop, Sally is really affectionate, and I really love her. She wants to, um, play and stuff. She says there's nothing really wrong with it because we aren't married to anyone else. Is that right? Can we, you know, get naked together as long as we don't, you know, put the, um, thing in the thing? Bishop: Billy, let's talk. [...] AUGUST Sally: Bishop! Please help! Billy RAPED me! The horrible cad! He defiled me! I'm going to get him arrested and ruin his life by charging him with RAPE! Bishop: Sally, I think we need to talk about this. News report: LDS bishop charged with failing to report teen sexual assault The fact is that none of us knows what happened here. We don't know what position the bishop was in or what the circumstances were. It's easy to read a headline and a short, uninformative writeup and draw a conclusion. Easy, but stupid.

I didn't know all the information you provided, Suzie. Thank you. But I knew I was right, because I grew up in an LDS household where my mother wore a very different garment from my father. Guess I grew up in that period following the unisex garment and preceding the two-piece, which were introduced a few years before I served a mission.

Sometimes I wear my wife's. It's no big deal. Plus, they're frilly and very pretty. PS Not really. PPS Not sure what the question was, but it sounds like you are thinking women didn't have a separate pattern for the garment before the 1970s. This is incorrect; even in the one-piece days, women had their own patterns.

Yeah, what are WE doing, not allowing those sisters to pray! How shameful of US! Good thing WE're not agitating for change or anything.

I was going to make a crack about my wife commenting on the "galactic bulge", but I decided the gravity thing would be safer.

I am not (yet) convinced that the current modern Priesthood offices of elder, high priest, seventy, patriarch, and apostle are identical to Priesthood offices in earlier dispensations. Obviously, the Priesthood is the same for all time. But the offices seem tailored to the needs of the dispensation. The term "high priest", for example, refers to the leader of the Levitical Priesthood officiators. When used with reference to the Melchizedek Priesthood, the term "high priest" often means simply "a holder of the high (i.e. Melchizedek) Priesthood", such that a latter-day elder would fully qualify as a "high priest". Similarly, today we have the office of "patriarch" in the Priesthood, but the ancient patriarchs and the Patriarchal Priesthood* they held surely is not limited in reference to this particular office, but to the Priesthood as a whole. *I realize there are those who maintain that the Patriarchal Priesthood is a separate entity from the Melchizedek Priesthood, some even suggesting that it is somehow a "higher" Priesthood. I think this is completely bogus, but it's a thread derailment in any case.

If I have to, I don't see any reason you should be exempt.

I've always suspected everything revolves around me. Glad to have MoE backing me up on this one!

Thanks, but I was hoping for an actual invite rather than a link to the sign-up page for when beta testing is done.

Anyone?

So you interpret it as meaning that his abdominal wall was ruptured. That seems to fit reasonably well with the wording, but it would suggest there was an unmentioned knife or sword or other instrument involved to cut his belly open. I interpret "all his bowels gushed out" to be a sort of euphemism for the bowel contents rather than the actual organs themselves, which I think would not really "gush". I would be interested to see an authoritative Bible commentary give an interpretation according to speech patterns of the time. A few various translations I've looked at seem to interpret the "burst asunder" more or less as "his body exploded". If this is a valid translation, then that might preclude the "pooped his pants" interpretation. RipplecutBuddha: I didn't take your comments as a thread hijack and didn't mean to contribute to one myself.

I didn't intend to engage in apologetics. When I learned at a young age that a broken neck causes the bowels to relax and evacuate their contents, I understood what Acts was referring to. It seemed, and seems, clear to me that it is referring to a self-inflicted neck-breaking hanging, going headlong (to maximize the body fall, which provides the force needed to break the neck) and resulting in evacuation of the bowels. Not sure what else it would refer to. What would you suggest? Do you think it refers to some Hebrew form of hara kiri? I'm not trying to be confrontational. I seriously don't know what else to make of plunging headlong and having all one's bowels gush out, other than a hanging that breaks the neck.

Hmmm... Do you know what happens to a man's bowels when his neck is broken? They all, um, gush out. True story. The Acts account is a reference to a hanging.

Couple of thoughts on your thoughts: I believe there is some value to be had in this, as it encourages us not to "read into the text" our prior beliefs. But I also think you cannot take this very far, because there simply is not enough material in the NT to be fully self-sufficient and cohesive. More importantly, we have learned some things by latter-day revelation that may give great illumination to some NT passages, and we would be foolish not to use such information to our advantage. The trick, of course, is to separate legitimate "readings-in" from spurious ones. Prophets ancient and modern have failed at doing this properly, so perhaps we ought not to worry excessively about making such mistakes. For example: I have long had as a pet peeve the interpretation of the Isaiah verses about "for all this his anger is not turned away, but his hand is stretched out still" as a loving God offering the hand of salvation despite his righteous anger, when the book itself defines the outstretched hand of God as the destruction of the wicked among his covenant people. But in the end, if the scriptures encourage people to repent and conform their lives to God, it really doesn't matter that the scripture is misinterpreted. Another example: I have recently learned that the phrase "line upon line, precept upon precept" was originally meant as a mocking description of those living outside the covenant. Yet today, we use it as a model for learning divine truths, a use almost diametrically opposed to its original meaning. Is this a bad thing? Apparently, God doesn't think it's bad enough to bother correcting the "wrong" interpretation. Instead, he just uses it to instruct us. I have long been impressed by the actions of the Lord at (for example) the pool of Bethesda, where a man begs for help because, when an "angel" of the Lord "troubled" the waters, whoever first got into the pool was magically healed of his ailment, and this poor soul had no one to dunk him after the "angel" did his business. Significantly, the Lord did not bother to correct the man's superstitious beliefs; rather, he simply healed him. This pattern is repeated throughout history: The Lord rarely bothers to correct wrong or superstitious beliefs unless they directly contradict his divine needs or covenants. Instead, he simply ignores them and teaches the important principles. What a great lesson to learn, if we could but learn it. The book of Acts may have been written before Paul was formally ordained an apostle. Alternatively, Matthias may have been mentioned specifically because he was the first, in order to show the natural order of apostolic succession, without bothering to name other apostles ordained later on. Paul was clearly recognized and acknowledged as an authoritative Church leader, so "Luke" may have felt no need to call out Paul's ordination specifically, assuming it was common knowledge.

He hanged himself, as is testified in two places. Is there some dispute about this?