Just_A_Guy

Interesting. Mine started working when I was SS President, but it’s kept working now even though I’m just a lowly temple and family history leader. 🤷‍♂️

If you have LDS Tools, you should be able to see stats on average weekly sacrament meeting attendance in your unit (under “Reports —> Quarterly Reports —> Indicators of Conversion and Church Growth”) and how many members of your unit have received their endowment and how many of those have current temple recommends (under “Reports —> Unit statistics”).

As I understand it, the custom was that the virgins would have been waiting with the bride at her house for the groom to come and fetch her. If he’s late enough that people are falling asleep, then the natural response at some point is “gosh, is he coming at all? Girl, he’s a deadbeat. Clearly not reliable. Not a provider. Not husband material. You should send him on his way even if he *does* come.” But these virgins did not give up on the bridegroom. Nor did they abandon the bride. They knew the groom had already paid the bride-price. They continued their vigil as loving and loyal friends, showing faith that the wedding was indeed still “on”. They aren’t bad girls; and even the ones we call “foolish” are still far wiser than most of their generation. But, notwithstanding their good intentions—some of them just plain weren’t ready to fully cope with an event that wasn’t playing out on their timetable.

FWIW, my law school graduating class was about the same size (or a shade smaller) as my high school graduating class; and it was amusing to see how many of my classmates were fairly obviously trying to turn the whole thing into a redo of their high school experiences (while the rest of us were just like “whatever, dude; I’m going home to my wife and kids now”).

Brother, I am sorry you’re going through this. I think @The Folk Prophet is on to something. Based on what you’ve written your wife has clearly broken her covenants to and relationship with you. You’ve got some hard decisions to make about whether that break is irreparable and where that leaves you in terms of your future relationship, financial affairs, children, etc. I think in these situations that it’s tempting to seek validation from the Church—to know that the guilty party was subjected to Church discipline, banned from temple entry, or at least to have a Church leader publicly proclaim “Jane Doe has committed sin x and the world should all recognize and acknowledge her as a predator to be condemned and shunned and person y as the victim of Jane’s behavior who deserves our support.” I would encourage you, hard as it is, to resist that temptation. To a significant degree Church discipline can only be applied to the extent that the guilty party is willing to subject themselves to such—by confessing, by telling the truth thoroughly, by making evidence available, by showing up to meetings and hearings at all. You know what she did. You know what God thinks of it. You know what destruction she has wrought. You know that someday—if not now, inevitably at some point—she’s going to feel the full weight of what she has done. You know that unless or until that day comes, her worship experiences are hollow and her covenants are null and void regardless of where she goes what scrap of paper she might carry in her wallet. It doesn’t feel like it now, but it’s possible to get to a mental and emotional state where your healing is completely independent of whatever does and doesn’t happen to her in this life. Life is still fundamentally good and beautiful, and you’ve got great things ahead of you. A quest for vindication and justice will distract you from seeking the good things in life, eat you alive, and ultimately leave you empty inside. I won’t tell you to “move on”. But I will tell you that your life will be better if you focus your efforts into cultivating a “move on” mentality.

I grew upon Rodgers & Hammerstein plus Phantom and Les Mis, and in college I got into Scarlet Pimpernel and Jekyll and Hyde. Those—either due to the music or the story— all seemed to have an “epic” quality that the newer stuff (even Wicked*) seems to lack. *Full disclosure: I never liked “The Wizard of Oz” in the first place—it just seemed freakish—so in my book “Wicked” was already starting from a hole it was never able to climb out of. And rap may be a technical skill, but it is utterly without beauty and thus I reject it (and by extension “Hamilton”) as an art form. Thank you for coming to my TED talk.

The thing about war is—if we’re smart, we go in with a vision of a specific set of objectives and a well-defined idea of what “victory” looks like. And fairly early on we have to convey that vision to the country and get them (mostly) on board with it. Does victory look like a specific nation or group of nations reducing its own tariffs or eliminating a particular uncompetitive practice? Or do we keep the “war” up until specific domestic industries have developed a particular capacity? Or do we keep going until the trade imbalance (either in the aggregate, or nation by nation) is “fixed”? And if, as some have hinted, the long-term goal is to transition federal government revenue from income-tax-based to tariff-based—there are some good arguments for that; but then they probably shouldn’t be selling tariffs to their base as a temporary, [economic] wartime-based expedient when they know darned well that these tariffs (or are version of them) are going to be permanent.

The overall layout *reminds* me a bit of the Financial Times website.

Something that gobsmacked me a couple weeks ago while perusing D&C 107, and of which I’m still pondering the significance (or lack thereof): Technically, scripturally, there’s no such thing as a quorum of deacons, or teachers, or priests, or elders. These groups sit in “council” in groups whose size is scripturally limited; but they are not called “quorums”. Scripturally a “quorum” is a body with authority to govern the church-at-large, and there are only five of them: —The First Presidency —The Q12 —A group consisting of all 70s in the Church —A group consisting of all stake high councilors in the Church —the high council in “Zion” (originally Missouri and later for a time, IIRC, a specific stake in SLC).

Sooo . . . I consider myself a conservative. I'm also pretty ardently NeverTrump. I believe he's a bad guy. The evidence that he is a sexual predator is, to me, convincing. I believe he abjectly fails every one of the criterion set out in D&C 98:10. I think he frequently exhibits a flagrant disregard for truth and a contempt for political adversaries that is incompatible with the way civic discourse is supposed to work in a functional democratic republic. (That said, I think his style is a natural and expected--if not "logical"--reaction to the way the American left and center-left have chosen to do politics over the last fifty years). I'm intensely proud of the fact that I never voted for him. With that being said, I think a lot of the critiques against him are unfair, dishonest, and/or histrionic. He's not a Nazi. He's not a racist (at least, as we've been brought up to define that term. "Cultural chauvinist" may be more apt.) He's not really even all that isolationist, given the American history of isolationism. With regard to the specific points you raise: Tariffs: I grew up being taught about the economic virtues of free trade--that the result was cheaper goods and a better lifestyle for everyone; and that even if someone else is tariffing your stuff, it's better for you in the long run not to tariff theirs. I still have a lot of sympathy for that position, and a presumptive suspicion against those who make a "we must protect these vital/infant industries!" argument. At the same time: It's pretty hard to ignore the reality that by and large, American industrial/manufacturing capability seems to have been hollowed out compared to where it was fifty or even twenty years ago; and it's starting to have national security ramifications (vis a vis China especially). I don't think that's all due to the fact that other countries have been tariffing our stuff while we haven't been tariffing theirs--labor and materiel supply and costs, regulation, culture, and other factors certainly play a role. And I'm sure that evaluating a single nation's entire network of trade regulations and formulating a conclusion about whether that nation is "exploiting" us in a way that demands retaliation--and then repeating that analysis for each of the the 190-odd other countries in the world--is something I have neither the time nor the inclination to do. But at this particular moment in time, I'm glad the analysis is being done by people who recognize that there are costs to free trade and aren't merely applying a "cheap goods uber alles, and let the blue-collar workers learn to code" framework. Foreign Aid: From a national-interest standpoint: foreign aid "feels" nice. But I'm not sure it has earned us any truly lasting friends who could and would, in a pinch, inconvenience themselves to meaningfully help us out. Obviously, Humanitarian-oriented foreign aid is a good thing to do if we can actually afford it and if it's actually accomplishing a certain amount of good within certain parameters of efficiency. But the financial state of the US government is dire. I don't think we can afford it. We're going to need draconian cuts across the board; and when it turns out we're sending billions of dollars in the name of "foreign aid" to subsidize LGBTQ+ propaganda in third-world nations whose majorities and governments don't want it--well, anytime you're trying to trim a budget, you're going to start by cutting the low-hanging fruit. Panama Canal: I don't care if we own it or collect the profit from it, as long as we can use it on equal terms with other countries and get priority for our naval vessels. If it's true that China is positioning itself to be able to control and potentially lock out canal traffic--that's unacceptable, at least for the short-term. (Though I think Trump is telling a number of lies about how it was built and who bore the brunt of the construction deaths, which of course I'm not a fan of.) Longer-term, I think we need to reconcile ourselves to the idea that we can't control what goes on in Panama or any other country; and we need to develop whatever infrastructure/redundancies we can so that we aren't so reliant on the Panama Canal. That probably means ramping up shipbuilding/refitting infrastructure on both of our coasts, exploring canal alternatives through Nicaragua or wherever else, just planning that more commercial ships may have to take the trip around Cape Horn, etc.) Greenland: They are a socially progressive people, and no Republican in their right mind would want to give Greenland two Senate seats or any electoral votes. And acquiring new, permanently non-voting "territories" just feels un-American. We *should* keep Greenland strategically available to and engaged with the "free world" [whatever THAT means these days, though that's another rant entirely!], both in terms of access to arctic transportation routes and commercial access to natural resources; and we should box out the powers that want to monopolize and exploit Greenland for their own ends. If that means a little Trumpian Kabuki theater for the next few months . . . I'm content to let that play out. Gaza: I think the last year and a half has borne out the notion that by and large, there are very few (if any) Gazan adults or adolescents who, given the chance, wouldn't enslave/starve/beat/rape/kill a Jew if they had the chance. It's a sick, sick, sick society--sicker by far than Nazi Germany or any of the other totalitarian regimes we typically associate with 20th century industrialized warfare. I pity the children born into this society, but . . . I don't know how you rehabilitate a people that is that far gone. I'm not convinced anything short of turning the whole area into a glass parking lot, really solves the problem. Trump is, of course, free to propose whatever pie-in-the-sky he wants; and if it changes the conversation and brings in some other stakeholders and ultimately gets the Gazans to give up the most degenerate of their hobbies--so be it. Just so long as it doesn't involve American lives or American dollars. We all saw how that goshawful "pier" turned out . . . Canada: See "Greenland". Ukraine: I feel bad for the Ukrainians. The Russian invasion of Ukraine was totally unjustified. Territorial guarantees were made back in the 1990s to induce Ukraine to give up their nukes, and those should have been respected in the 2000s and 2010s, regardless of how many ethnic-so-and-sos were living in which regions. At the same time: The $170 billion the US has given/committed to Ukraine, plus even larger amounts from the Europeans, seems to have accomplished a stalemate at best. The price of re-taking Donbas and Crimea seems likely to be American boots on the ground, or another $170 billion, or some combination of the two; and frankly--that's not a price I, as an American, am willing to pay. I'm sorry, I'm just not. If that makes me a crappy "citizen of the world", then I guess I'll just have to embrace that part of my identity and sit on my couch and feel bad about myself while my moral superiors show their compassion and virtue by signing themselves and their families up to join the Ukrainian International Legion. If Ukraine continues to stick with the line that they won't accept peace without getting Donbas and Crimea back, then I think it's right for the US to say "If you don't end this thing then we're going to scale back our aid on such-and-such a timeline, which we will make public; and after that you're going to be on your own." My gut is that Trump should have left it there (and maybe offered the Ukrainians a few dozen nuclear warheads), rather than trying to work out the nuts and bolts of a ceasefire and trying to get the US some mining privileges along the way. That said, I am inclined to think that the debacle at the White House was primarily Zelensky's fault--he was trying to goad Trump publicly into making a specific security guarantee that he must have known from the earlier private conversations, Trump wasn't ready to make. But a potential silver lining to the debacle is that the Europeans seem to have gotten the message loud and clear that they need to develop an independent credible deterrent force against Russia. (Then again: Will they actually use that new force against Russia? Or will they use it to force regime change in socially-conservative eastern countries like Romania or Hungary or Poland?) Europe/Russia/NATO, generally: I'm sort of in "a plague on all your houses" mode here. IMHO, NATO was supposed to push back against the global spread of a specific expansionist totalitarian ideology backed by military force, not the local (or even continental) territorial ambitions of a particular European power. NATO was supposed to champion liberty, free speech, free religion, free elections, free markets, and general Western enlightenment ideals and traditions. At this point I think the US needs to ask itself some hard questions about whether whatever it is that NATO now represents is worth spending American blood and treasure to defend; and questions about what the nature of the current threat actually is. I grew up on, and love, the vision of America, and the West generally, as defenders and propagators of liberty and justice. But VP Vance made some potent points in Munich about modern European commitment to some of those principles. Our misadventures in Afghanistan and Iraq seem to have shown that as an outsider you can't prop up a free society by giving more for their liberty than they themselves are willing to give. And while Putin is clearly an evil SOB and Russia may indeed have continental ambitions--I can't help but notice that the great bugaboo of Russia has gotten bogged down in a quagmire against what was until recently a third-rate military fighting for what was considered to be more-or-less the redneck capital of Europe. Do the Eurocrats really think that the combined armies of western Europe couldn't do as well as Ukraine has done? Really? And for all the Eurocrat histrionics about the Russian threat to western Europe and global peace as a whole--their own actions, in terms of defense spending and military buildup, suggests that they aren't really all that worried about Russian expansionism (or weren't, until very recently). When I was practicing as a lawyer in the private sector, I used to tell my clients "I'm not going to take your case more seriously than you do". But that's precisely what my European friends seem to want my country to do. In the past, I've argued that America-as-world's-policemen made sense from a mathematical standpoint—better to lose 2,500 men/year for a hundred years, then half a million men in a once-in-a-century world war. But why are we the only ones who have to do that math? And why do we have to put up with the rest of Europe posing and preening and spitting in our eyes while we do it? "Autarky", as you call it, has definite drawbacks; but on the whole it's starting to look preferable to having a crew of European wannabe dictators perennially scheming to use my kids as cannon fodder in their grudge-matches against other European wannabe dictators. China: I'm not sure what "handing China the win" actually means here. Letting China surpass us in military capabilities (almost, if not already, there), surpass us in shipbuilding capacity (exceeded long ago, by several orders of magnitude), surpass us in manufacturing generally, steal our technology and then surpass much of it, lock up repositories of natural resources around the globe, spread propaganda around the globe, and bully its neighbors who had previously expected us to be able to effectively protect them? That has already happened. China is *already* winning. The post-cold-war order, championed by presidents of both parties (but most notoriously Clinton and Obama), let them win. It's not defeatism to say "holy crap, we're behind, we'd better work harder to catch up". It's the opposite of defeatism. And to his credit, Trump was one of the earliest and loudest voices sounding the alarm on this issue (hence the "stop Asian hate" business a couple of years ago, which was calculated to paint him and others who stood up to the CCP as "racists" and which, IIRC, actually had support from Confucius Institutes around the country). If part of the process of "waking the sleeping giant" against Chinese aggression entails a tariff war that may succeed at getting certain concessions out of the Chinese that will foster long-term stability and prosperity--well, finding American alternatives to Chinese imports is an American tradition that goes back to the Revolution itself. Taiwan: As noted above, our hand in supporting Taiwan at the moment is extremely weak--and more so due to simple geography. We cannot effectively defend them against a Chinese invasion without tremendous loss (and the likelihood of effectively defending them at all diminishes every day. The Chinese know this; and there's no sense in our strutting around like impotent roosters pretending we can do what everyone knows we can't do. We should build redundancies for Taiwanese microchip manufacturers on American soil. We should offer asylum to freedom-loving Taiwanese who want it. Maybe we could even give them land- and sub-based nuclear ICBMs.* (Actually, the UK could do all those things as easily as we could.) But beyond that--what would the UK, which infamously handed Hong Kong back to the CCP, have us do to safeguard the liberty and security of the Taiwanese people? So I guess, in total, my thought would be: We're at a precarious moment in history. The old status quo is not sustainable. I wish the US were led by someone with a universally acknowledged and acclaimed vision for what the next century of international relations are going to look like (and if that person were a decent human being and worthy of inspiration by the Spirit of God in the same way that--say--Pahoran and Moroni and Helaman were, so much the better!) But other than Russell M. Nelson (who I voted for, but who I'm sure doesn't want the job), we have no such person in the world today. And I think Trump's instincts aren't actually terrible on this. So my inclination is to, as the kids say, "let him cook". * Long-term, I think the notion of an international peace secured by the implicit of American-guaranteed MAD, needs to be replaced by an international peace secured by a series of regional "Mini-MADS" that need not go global or result in counterstrikes on the US--the UK, France, Poland, and maybe Ukraine countering bad actors in Europe; India and Israel securing southwest Asia; Japan and Taiwan and maybe South Korea in east Asia; and Australia in the western Pacific.

And here I thought y’all were going to be talking about fishing . . .

Well, at least now we know where the “blessing the hands that prepared it” line comes from. The OP, and a couple of responses, got me thinking about what “bless” really means. Google seems to associate it with “consecrate”. I suppose that for Latter-day Saints who consider ourselves to be consecrated beings living consecrated lives, a formal consecration of food that is about to become part of our consecrated bodies provides a lot of opportunity for reflection and renewal. It’s not about “purifying” the food, per se; it’s about taking a moment to consider the Source of the food and ponder the food’s role in our ongoing quest to—with the Lord’s help—purify ourselves.

I was recently watching a podcast with Don Bradley (sorry, I’ve forgotten the link) where he mentioned in passing that the small plates may not have been physically attached to Mormon’s/Moroni’s record. Bradley also suggests that after the 116 pages fiasco, Joseph and Emma (and then Oliver) continued where Joseph and Martin Harris had left off; and finished through to the end of Moroni before leaving Emma’s parents’ farm in Harmony. If both of those are true, then Joseph doesn’t actually need Mormon’s plates anymore when he leaves Harmony; all he’s going to need are the detached, small plates of Nephi. And there’s something very poetic to me about the possibility that Nephi, himself a resurrected being, had a council with Moroni and said “my umpteen- great- great grandson, you’ve done so well taking care of your part of the record. Now let me take care of my part of the record.” Maybe it was Nephi himself who transported his own small plates from Harmony to Fayette, and later showed them to Mary Whitmer.

Here’s another fun interview with Bradley:

Technically, I think we are talking about “battery”, not “assault”.

Well, women have a thing for a man in a uniform . . .

[None of this is legal advice, in case you were wondering!] 1. Absolutely justified. 2. He has no duty to keep getting hit. Most likely (depending on jurisdiction) he does have a duty to retreat if possible. If counterattacking gives him a window for a safe retreat, IMHO, he should take the opportunity for a counterattack. 3. Seems excessive, but I’m not really into martial arts/combat and shouldn’t be second-guessing those who are. I suppose it’s justified if reasonably necessary to incapacitate the attacker while making his escape/retreat. 4. The woman. She attacked him from behind as he was de-escalating. 5. No difference. (Nor, for that matter, in cases where both parties are the same sex but have vastly different sizes.)

Not in the D&C but communicated to Smith by at least nine different people; including three future apostles and two future general RS presidents. https://ensignpeakfoundation.org/wp-content/uploads/2013/03/Encouraging-Joseph-Smith-to-Practice-Plural-Marriage-The-Accounts-of-the-Angel-with-a-Drawn-Sword.pdf

IIRC, Joseph F Smith was church historian for a while in the late 19th century; and there were several docs that he felt people just weren’t ready to hear (and of course, being Joseph’s nephew, he had a personal interest in not wanting negative matter about his uncle being published). For example, I think it was him who managed to obtain William McClellin’s journals and he locked them away so deeply that the church (and everyone else) forgot it had them . . . leading Mark Hoffman to claim he had the journals, and the Church (via proxy) to express interest in obtaining them. When the (real) journals were finally found and released, there was nothing really earthshaking; just run-of-the-mill disaffected Mormon stuff. I suspect most of the really saucy stuff from Clayton’s journal is already “out there”; and If the Church has been deliberately suppressing them in the name of protecting anyone’s image over the past 20-30 years, I would guess it has more to do with protecting Emma’s rather than Joseph’s—from what I gather, Clayton sometimes doesn’t paint her in a good light; and there are factions in the Church right now that can’t abide anything negative being said about Emma. My *guess* is that at this point the Church is ok releasing them eventually if/when it can be done in a format that will properly contextualize them. Heck, they may even be working on it now.

Excerpts of Clayton’s journals have been published in the past. In 2017 the JSPP was saying they’d publish the whole thing after the JSP were completed; though so far that hasn’t happened. From what I gather, the journals are highly unlikely to present Joseph as a monogamist or even as having been particularly ambivalent about the divine origin of polygamy. To the contrary, my understanding is that they likely contain some seamier details of polygamy generally and the drama between Joseph and Emma in particular—supposedly even including Emma declaring her intent that if Joseph could pursue additional wives, then she could and would pursue additional husbands.

OK, I'm back on a laptop so hopefully can express myself/respond a little more clearly via the "quote" function. I don't think I'd cited Joseph Sr. as a source for having witnessed the translation process, or even for using the seer stone. I merely cited him for the proposition that he had, in fact, seen the Nephite interpreters. Martin Harris also remarked on their inordinately large size, as did a couple of other non-LDS who were acquainted with the Smiths during the BOM printing process (see the Dirkmaat article I linked to in my prior post). As the conversation has progressed I've realized the distinction between the accounts saying JS used the seer stone, and the accounts saying JS put the instrument (whichever it was) into a hat. And yeah, William Smith (and Elizabeth Cowdery) only back the latter view. I'm referring to your earlier statement that: 3. On another line of thinking: If he used the U&T (whether exclusively or primarily) then it is a poor narrative/bad framing to simply "accept" the narrative of the stone in the hat and forget about the U&T. (Whether intended or not, that is exactly what the stone narrative is doing.) I don't think acknowledging that the seer stone was used, constitutes "accept[ing] the narrative of the stone in the hat and forget[ting] about the U&T." Are they actually in his handwriting? As I understand it, the HC was written by scribes in Joseph's voice; parts dictated by Joseph and others under his direction to a greater or lesser degree. As we parse out the statements in the HC, I think it's fair to point out that a) There are questions about how specific JS was willing to be (the 1826 Stowell trial docs suggest that the entire experience was mortifying for him; JS Sr. apparently testified and stated as much). And we know he was simplistic, if not outright evasive, in his explanation for why his name had been associated with money digging (see JS-Hist 1:56). b) Even if JS were inclined to be specific, it's an open question as to whether the scribes caught the nuances of what he was telling them; and c) Given that what scholars understand of the biblical U&T suggests that those particular stones worked significantly differently than either the seer stone or the Nephite interpreters did, "Urim and Thummim" may simply be a catch-all term for any sacred physical object (or at least, any stone) that serves as a conduit for revelation. Not necessarily; it just means that for whatever reason, he didn't want to talk about seer stones anymore. Martin Harris said that Joseph was specifically told by Moroni to get away from the money diggers. [Source] His activities with the seer stone, in hindsight, were not a point of pride for him. As noted above, I think it's "facts not in evidence" to assert that all of those revelations definitely came through the interpreters and not the seer stone. David Whitmer seems to have thought that they came through the latter; and IIRC attributed much of his falling-out with Joseph to Joseph's having abandoned its use. In fact, the earliest draft of the HC that exists dates to 1839 (though there was an earlier lost draft begun in 1838); whereas David Whitmer was excommunicated in April of 1838. If the seer stone was a wedge issue between Joseph and David, then that's another reason for Joseph to downplay its role in the restoration as he writes his official history. Fair enough. Vaguely; but with respect, I don't see its applicability to the current discussion. My point is that there is a purpose to what God does; and that we aren't really in a position to divine natural laws and then overlay them onto God to determine how He would or wouldn't act; or how an instrument He has created should or shouldn't work under a given set of circumstances. There's more at play here than simple mechanics. I don't see it that way. I think we overestimate the degree to which Joseph Smith knew, when he got the plates, precisely what he was doing; and/or the quality of his training up to that point in receiving revelation. The crowd who taught him to use seer stones, don't seem to be the most savory of characters. Even after he had the plates, it seems not to have initially occurred to Joseph that he already had instruments that could unlock a divine power of translation: he's reportedly approaching locals with copied characters from the plates to see if they recognize the language. He eventually takes a stab at translating and dispatches Martin Harris with the characters and translation to New York City to meet with the eminent scholars of the day and check his work--only to find out that they can't do it; and at that point it seems he finally understands that his job was more than that of a finder and caretaker. He already knows the Nephite interpreters are far superior to the seer stone--he tells his mother as much the day he gets them--and the interpreters thus serve as both a confidence-booster and a sort of set of "spiritual training wheels", affirming to him that God had prepared means especially for him to do the work and providing a crutch as Joseph hones his ability to recognize the Spirit (especially in those early days prior to his baptism [after which Oliver says they received a spiritual outpouring] and his ordination to the Melchizedek Priesthood [at which time he would have finally gotten the Gift of the Holy Ghost]). On what basis do we say that a [divinely approved] seer stone is functionally and/or theologically different than a Urim and Thummim? On what basis do we say that Joseph's brown seer stone was not a Urim and Thummim? Does Joseph ever say that that? Heck, per Wandle Mace's account, during the Nauvoo period Joseph even applies the term "Urim and Thummim" to a set of seer stones that he also condemns as having been consecrated to devils. It's been a couple of years and I don't remember the demonstration narrative, but . . . sure. But I would still come back to my questions above: Once Joseph starts using the term "Urim and Thummim", does he ever say that any of his other seer stones were not Urim and Thummim? Does he ever, after that, mention the brown stone at all? That's a really good point on the time frame generally. But I think Emma was in a position to do some of the translation work in the interim between when Joseph got the plates back, and when the family relocated. David and Elizabeth Whitmer were living at the Whitmer home. William, though not a witness to the process, is very well positioned to have heard accounts about it directly from the parties involved. Martin's narrative, of course, applies to the 116 pages; but if we know that the seer stone was used at least some of the time early in the process, then it seems remarkably cavalier to flat-out deny that it was used later in the process. Especially on the basis of statements by Joseph Smith that are not comprehensive and weren't intended to be.

I need to correct myself: Lucy felt them under a silk handkerchief the night Joseph got the plates, as related in her account as dictated to the Corays, the manuscript of which is on the JSP website. Going back to the other 2 accounts: remember JS Sr was eventually one of the 8 witnesses. Joseph Sr’s account comes via a late recollection from one Fayette Lapham, who in 1870 published a (highly skeptical) account of his interview with Joseph Sr from 1830, which is available online via Wikisource. William’s account comes from a book he published in 1831 called “On Mormonism” which is available online via archive.org. Apologies for the lengthy response time; I had missed this earlier. I’m posting on my phone and can’t do a well-cited comprehensive response now, but a couple of cursory responses: —On narrative of U&T vs SS: I don’t think Option 3 needs to unnecessarily downplay the role of the U&T/Nephite Interpreters. The fact is, we just don’t know exactly what the balance was; and the more we entrench into the position that one or the other was not used in the process, the more likely we are to be disproven at some point. —Beware of D&C sections headings as a source for describing the medium by which those headings were received. D&C 6 was originally published in the Book of Commandments as “Chapter V”—you can see it on the JSP website, and that header says nothing about how it was received. To suss all that out you have to go back to whoever wrote the headings—I think they mostly hark back to the “History of the Church”, which was written by JS well after 1833 (when he apparently started using the term “U&T” exclusively and, AFAIK, never explicitly referred to the seer stone again) and which was largely written as dictated to scribes. We know that for at least part of 1829 JS had the Nephite interpreters *and* the seer stone(s). —I’d be interested to hear your theory on the interpreters and how they were used; though I certainly understand your reticence here. —I think it’s important to differentiate Joseph’s seer stone (which was of God) from Sally Chase’s stone/glass (about which we know no such thing). If we hypothesize that seer stones work according to some sort of unknown-yet-natural phenomena, then asking why God let Sally’s stone work “a little, but not all the way” is like asking why God let my beater car go 300,000 miles, but not 300,050 miles, before conking out. At some point the discussion is less about natural/mechanical cause-and-effect; and more about why God does what He does and what He’s trying to teach us through the layers of protection He does or doesn’t offer. (For example, in the case of the Sally-inspired raid on the empty box, it reminds Joseph that there are unseen-but-real supernatural powers trying to take the plates from Joseph and that he needs to be utterly vigilant). Re the roadblocks you cite: —On seer stones/U&T showing “what is not”—again, you’re talking about Sally Chase’s stone here; and I think we get into trouble if we look at (divinely approved) seer stones as a mechanical object that is bound by law to always work in the same way and under a consistent set of conditions/ restrictions. (And even Sally’s stone was apparently able to accurately show what had previously been; just not—in that instant—what was the current situation.) —As to why JS would transition from the U&T to a “lesser” instrument: One might as well ask why he would quit using any physical revelatory medium at all (which, odor far as we know, he eventually did). It may well be that he didn’t initially realize that the seer stone could *also* function as an interpreter. There’s certainly a lot of unclarity here; but I think people who deny that the seer stone was ever used in translating need to explain why Whitmer, Harris, and Emma (who were actually there when it was happening) claimed to have seen it being used. If it was never used, then who was it who originated these rumors so powerful that they managed to taint the memories of 3/4 of the firsthand witnesses to the process; and what was the originator’s agenda? And, one thing that just occurred to me (as I perused this article)—what do we do with the witnesses who don’t necessarily specify which instrument was used, but are quite certain that they saw a hat being used in the process? Does that change the analysis? Should it?

—As much as it pains me to say it: Ukraine seems unlikely to retain its lost territories—period. —“Peace in our time” accompanied a virtually bloodless German occupation; it left Germany unsated but—more forebodingly—unharmed and ready to fight again. This time around the Russkies have already lost 150-200K troops and scads of equipment; their economy is in the crapper; and their illusions of invulnerability are largely shattered. The Daily Mail claims Russia is gearing up for all out war in Europe by 2030; but I frankly don’t believe they have the resources or the will to do it (not right now, at least). —Long-term, Russia still covets *all* of Ukraine. Ukraine should reject any peace that prevents it from preparing for the next invasion in 2040 or 2070 or whenever it happens. —Frankly, much of the NATO membership has become the sort of authoritarian collectivists (UK, France, Germany, Belgium, Netherlands) that NATO was formed to safeguard against. The US should probably withdraw, or at least retrench, from its NATO commitments; and clear the way for a new European alliance as a check against Russian expansionism. I have no problem with a peace that commits to Ukraine staying out of NATO so long as Ukraine has the leeway to join whatever local alliance takes its place. —Ukraine should be given nukes (or be allowed a period in which to develop their own nuclear program). We un-nuked them in the 1990s in exchange for territorial guarantees that we then abandoned. It seems unlikely that anything else will contain the Russians long-term; and restoring that post-cold-war status quo is the least we can do.

I’d have to look it up, but I believe Lucy Smith also said she’d seen them and left a fairly detailed description.

https://www.churchofjesuschrist.org/study/manual/revelations-in-context/oliver-cowderys-gift?lang=eng The entire “Revelations in Context” series is excellent.