Faded

That's funny because a Gallup Poll just barely found Utah to be the happiest state in the nation.The Happiest States of America - Economix Blog - NYTimes.com

Now that's very interesting. Can you site some references for me to look through?

I wouldn't disagree with you in the least. I have sought for most of my life to understand and respect the beliefs of others. In the process, I've become painfully aware of how infrequently it is to find that desire for understanding reciprocated. There's a awful lot of hate out there focused on the Church of Jesus Christ of Latter Day Saints and all of it is a sad thing indeed. But I've also been frustrated to find the same behavior among Latter Day Saints, when talking about other religions. It's always a bad thing no matter where you find it. A closed mind is a wonderful thing to lose. That goes for everyone.

What it comes down to is not that she, the girlfriend, is a terrible person. The trouble is, she's closed her mind to everything LDS because this is what she was taught to do. Closed-mindedness is prejudice. She's listening to everyone's opinion about Mormons other than Mormons. She's not giving it much of a chance to be true because she's been taught not to. She already had the opinion that Joseph Smith was a "man-whore." Who do you think gave her that idea??How do you overcome prejudices that have been taught to people all their lives? Well, the short answer is that it is extremely difficult. If I were in blusun7's circumstance, I would have to somehow get her to realize that she's being closed-minded about it all. As she has a Baptist minister as a father, I think we can conclude that it would be highly unlikely that she is going to have a sudden change of heart and join the LDS Church at some point. It is possible that she would join just because it's what her boyfriend wants, but this would be hollow and meaningless. One of the most critical matters determining the success of a marriage between two religious-minded people is that they belong to the same faith. If they do not belong to the same denomination, then there must be respect for each others' beliefs. It sounds like there is good reason to doubt that this will be true in this case. Continuing on into a marriage could lead to arguments over which church the children will go to, frequent arguments, and a lot of other bad things. Marriage is hard enough without all that thrown on top. But do not mistake me, I am not telling blusun7 to break up with his current girlfriend. That is something that should be taken up with God and God alone.

I think that referencing Peterson at all was in extremely bad taste Erik. Here is why: 1.) You open a discussion about the upcoming 500th birthday of John Calvin, then you link the article talking about Calvinism going more Evangelical. 2.) Next you had to throw in a quote to demonstrate a complete non-truth. "You Mormons HATE Calvinism!! I have the quote to prove it RIGHT HERE!!" That's inflammatory and had absolutely nothing to do with the topic your were presenting. 3.) You leave the suggestion hanging there that all Mormons are religious bigots and expect it to not bother anyone. If you can find all of the people who have ever said anything inflammatory about the Church of Jesus Christ of Latter Day Saints and call on them to repent of their terrible behavior, you will seem a lot less hypocritical to me. You don't have to go digging for inflammatory comments from other faiths about us and you could spend the rest of your life trying to convince them to stop their unChristian behavior. There is so many of them and so much hateful propaganda against Mormonism that you'll never make a dent if you spent every waking hour of the rest of your life trying. The Anti-Mormon organizations throughout all Christian religions have heaped up a mountain of inflammatory and hateful statements, yet most Christian faiths do nothing to discourage them. Can you forgive Brother Peterson for his small mole-hill of similar statements, while not treating the Anti-Mormons with the same sense of zealous indignation? I think the grown up thing to do would be to delete the remarks, and continue with the discussion. Poisoning the discussion from the start is very bad form.

Missed it, when did she get baptized? We should have a calendar for these things! Congratulations Mrs Marshac!!

It should be both religious obligation as well as personal choice. If you must begin by doing the right thing for lesser reasons, then at least you are doing the right thing. In the process of continuing to do the right thing, the true spirit of it comes to rest inside you. If we learn from Jesus Christ and Joseph Smith, we see that giving of themselves for the wants and needs of others was second nature to them. That is how all of us should be.

The important thing to remember is that it is the rest of the Temple ceremonies that are to be kept sacred, as we are told within the ceremony itself to keep them sacred. As for baptisms for the dead, it's a matter of public knowledge that we do them. There's not much information that isn't already open and available to anyone. The twelve oxen has a few reasons: 1.) Solomon was instructed to build a basin of water in the same fashion. Twelve oxen representing the twelve tribes of Israel. 2.) The Lord revealed that we were to build the same thing and that this was the place where baptism for the dead by proxy was to occur. 3.) As the Church of Jesus Christ seeks the fulfillment of Malachi "And he shall turn the heart of the fathers to the children, and the heart of the children to their fathers, lest I come and smite the earth with a curse." I think that remembering the 12 tribes of Israel is an important part of that work because it reminds us of the ancient house of Israel -- whose promises we are seeking to fulfill. There are LDS religious tracts that have pictures of ALL of the rooms of the temple, and every temple open-house allows free access to all interested parties, irrespective of their religious affiliation, to all parts of the newly completed temple. Once the temple has been dedicated, then this free access ends. So the description of the rooms of the temple is not what we are to hold sacred. It is the ceremonies themselves.

Do as the Lord directs, by all means. I do hope that you will continue to solidify your background and knowledge in the life of Joseph Smith and the teachings of the Restored Gospel. This could be seen as a first step in arming yourself with better understanding and knowledge. Just remember that the greatest knowledge of all is this: God Himself called Joseph Smith to be His prophet. All questions and attacks against any part of the Restored Gospel of Jesus Christ leads directly back to this fact. If God did it, then no believer in God can argue against it. You are right that you can never change another person. Only the other person can change themselves. We do not get to choose that for them. I wish you all the best. God Bless Faded

Obviously it isn't. While it is certainly clear that wine and alcoholic beverages had their place in Biblical times. But the Bible strongly counsels against drunkenness. Some lovely Christian site has dug up all the Biblical references for me: Bible Quotes About Why It's Wrong To Get Drunk All of the above is Biblical Christian doctrine and teaching. The goofy uncle posing the questions would probably try to argue with them too. I would question his real motives. In this day and age, there's a lot of misuse of alcohol and a lot of bad things that come from it. I think that it is very clear that Biblical writers were well aware of the the potential problems and instructed the Lord's People accordingly. Despite the many denunciations against drunkenness in the Bible, the Word of Wisdom and it's prohibition of alcohol does not take its authority from the Bible. It is a new commandment in this day.

There are so many predicted dates for the end of the world or the Second Coming that somebody is going to guess it right eventually. I'm going to go for April 6, 2015. Why? Because I have yet to predict the Second Coming for one thing. For another, because it sounds like as good a day as any.

Yes I read it. Calvinist elements have been on the decline in recent decades, or so I've heard. Anything that would re-energize any Christian religion is good news. We live in times where far too many are turning their backs on religion altogether. We'll see how it all goes for them from here.

Erik, I think that other responders have adequately covered the matter of your taking Professor Peterson's comments greatly out of context. Do Latter Day Saints believe in many of the advances and teachings of the Reformation? Yes. Do we unquestioningly accept all of those teachings the Reformers came up with? No. When it comes to John Calvin, it is his teaching of predestination that we disagree with. It is not to say that John Calvin did not do a lot of good things. Without him, Martin Luther, John Hus, and a long list of others, the Restoration through Joseph Smith would not have been made possible. I can promise you that if any group of Latter Day Saints were to organize themselves to target and attack other religions (which is EXACTLY what anti-Mormon elements do withing Protestant faiths) then the General Authorities would see to shutting it down, post-haste. There is the saying, "People who live in glass houses should not throw stones." Anti-Mormon hate propaganda gives absolutely no heed to that bit of wisdom, and consistently places the LDS religion into question. Each of those types of questions, if redirected at the rest of Christian faiths, could not be adequately answered by any of them either. But we do not return fire as a matter of principal. Every Christian faith has a history that could be thrown under microscope and picked apart but apparently it is only popular to do so to the Church of Jesus Christ of Latter Day Saints. This hate mongering is not God's will. He intends for all those who follow him, Catholic, Latter Day Saint, Presbyterian, Pentecostal, Baptist, etc. to get along, work together for good, and not act like spoiled children fighting over the same toy. No modification would be required. We view the Restored Gospel of Jesus Christ as the fulfillment of all the faith and hard work on the part of Christians for these many centuries. What we have received completes what was received before, it does not destroy it. We acknowledge that God works within every Christian denomination. We have received more information from God and simply ask all to come and see it. Easily done. You do realize that you've failed to "play nice" on more than one occasion, right? I hope that is in the past now. I may very well do something like that. What is the exact birth date?

Herein lies the trouble: We human beings are pre-wired to fall in love, to make love and to procreate. My recommendation would be to make decisions together. 1.) Are the two of you going to get married or are you not? If you are not, then break off the relationship. If you are going to marry him, then: 2.) Get married already!! A civil marriage is not a cop-out. It takes your natural physical attraction and behavior and flips it from "thou shalt not" to "thou shalt" and that is the way God intends it for the rest of your life together. "Thou shalt make love." If you are prepared in every way for marriage other than temple worthiness, then this is just common sense to go ahead and marry. Having sex and sexual relations is not a wicked thing. But doing it without being married is what was extremely bad. For a couple who intends to marry anyways, the shortest and surest pathway to not sinning anymore is to marry. By talking yourselves out of civil marriage, you're setting yourself up for repeated failure unnecessarily. 3.) Go through the repentance process and see it through to completion. It is not a year to do as you dang well please, it is a year to think very seriously about your actions. And when you've gone through true repentance -- anguish of soul followed by the powerful and beautiful healing coming through the Atonement of Christ -- then you will be ready to go to the Temple. I think your thought process is misdirected, but good in that it should help you repent fully and completely and not short-change the process. And you cannot short-change repentance by civil marriage. But by avoiding it, you can put yourself in a battle you may not be able to win. 4.) As some respondents have rightly pointed out, the next enemy to overcome is complacency. So as a wedding gift to each other, buy a large picture of the temple you intend to go to. Put it somewhere you will each see it every day. You could stick a calendar underneath it and start crossing off days. The point is to create a solid reminder for yourself that your goal is temple marriage. 5.) Get married in the temple. If you hold this as your absolute end-goal, then everything else will work out right. It is quite likely that by having to wait a year, you will both learn to appreciate the Temple more and that you will have the opportunity to truly reconcile yourselves with God before entering His house. More than anything else, pray about it. Sexual sin dulls the spiritual senses, so you will have to pray very hard to get answers, but you need the Lord's guidance here. Any advice from anyone else is going to fall short of perfection. His guidance is perfect.

I remember there was this corner of Texas that was part of the mission that I served in. Everyone wanted to go there because there was a new person or family baptized almost every week -- which is almost unheard of anywhere in the South. There was one thing that set that ward apart from all others in the mission: 100% Home Teaching, 100% Visiting Teaching, consistently, without fail. I know of all the excuses because I've used them myself. But when it comes down to it, I don't think members of the Church fully realize what impact Home Teaching and Visiting Teaching can have. And even those who realize it's importance can and do forget to do it.

Big congratulations on your baptism. Wonderful experience, I highly recommend it to everyone in the World!

I think Maya hits the point exactly. On the Internet, there is absolutely no shortage of spiritual pornography (anti-Mormon garbage) and it's because they are so obsessive about destroying our Church. I think it's very interesting that the peddlers of actual pornography, hate groups and the anti-Mormons have in common. They all got to the Internet very early on and established an overwhelming presence there. It's not a question of whether we should overcome such adversity. It's a matter of doing it. Every piece of new technology offers boundless opportunities to share the message of God with the world. Each new technological advance in communication is a gift from God. It's up to the members of God's Church to reclaim that gift from those who would misuse it. But human networking is infinitely more powerful. Home Teaching and Visiting Teaching provide the minimum standard. We should be aiming higher than visiting families once a month. But why do we struggle to even meet the minimum standard? If we can first meet and then exceed the minimum standard, then I think it will have a greater impact on Missionary Work than anything else we can do.

Here's what we know. It is clear from thorough study of Church History that Joseph Smith knew about the principal of plural marriage as early as 1831. He did not begin to institute the practice until 1842, which was 11 years later. Now Joseph Smith always tended to understate things as they related to him, so I wouldn't expect to find a statement from him about this. But we start with 11 years of ... procrastination shall we say. Now couple that with the experience that motivated him to finally begin to institute the practice, and I think we can correctly infer that Joseph Smith was the most reluctant of polygamists. LDS Mormon Joseph Smith Angel Sword Vision Polygamy Okay so what we have here is multiple accounts of the same experience. Joseph Smith put the whole thing off until he was threatened with immediate destruction and damnation by an angel of the Lord. I think we can take 11 years delay together with needing to be threatened with death and destruction by an angel of God to be adequate evidence of Joseph Smith's reluctance. The reason I quoted many sources is because I want to make it clear that this experience with the angel was not something Joseph Smith fabricated later on to cover his tracks. It was something that many members were told of, immediately upon the outset of the institution of plural marriage. This is the only instance I can recall where Joseph Smith was this reluctant to obey a command from the Lord. If we piece together the obvious, that adds up to Joseph Smith being anything but a "man-whore" or any other such thing. But of course, this does not prove Joseph was a prophet of God. To the unbelieving, this is probably all just very quaint storytelling to make excuses, etc. So as always, the key is knowing for certain that Joseph Smith was a true prophet of God. It is also very important to emphasize that we have not practiced plural marriage of any kind since bout 1890 -- 119 years ago. So while you can explain the circumstances of it all, it's really much ado about ancient history. If we were less charitable than we are, we might bring up a lot of things about the teachings of other religions from that same time period. For instance, the entire Southern Baptist Church, together with virtually every other Christian denomination in the Southern States, actively preached that blacks were slaves because God commanded it to be so, and that it was against God's will that they should be otherwise. Everyone has their history of questionable teachings, yet it is the Church of Jesus Christ of Latter Day Saints that has theirs put under a microscope and picked apart. I find that fact very interesting indeed.

From my understanding, while the growth has remained level, the retention of new converts has risen significantly. One of the most important things we can possibly do is actually retain the new members. So whatever ideas anyone has, it is crucial that retention be a major consideration. The traditional missionary program of the Church is not in tremendous need for radical change. Three things are lacking: 1.) The number of full-time missionaries should be growing in direct proportion to the membership of the Church, but it isn't. Clearly, we need more of them. 2.) Missionaries need to learn to exercise greater faith. 3.) The membership of the Church has the growing tendency to leave everything to the full-time missionaries. Each Latter Day Saint that this is true of needs to find a way to change their thinking. This is the BIG ONE. If the membership of the Church can accomplish a few things, the effectiveness of both proselyting and retention grows exponentially. 100% Home Teaching and Visiting Teaching. It's not difficult, and it can open doors in unexpected ways.Be less fearful and take the opportunities when the opportunities arise to share the Restored Gospel with others. Simply get more involved and enthusiastic in every aspect of Church attendance.The Internet is an excellent medium for a variety of reasons. For those who are fearful about being embarrassed by sharing the Restored Gospel, it can provide enough anonymity for them to practice and get better -- so they can soon do better in real-life circumstances. As with any newer media type, the most despicable elements of society have jumped in headlong and done all they can to dominate. I'm talking about pornography and anti-Mormon groups. It's imperative that we do more than just make our voices heard. We need to be heard in spite of the over-loud armies of Satan trying to drown our message out. The question is, how can we drastically increase our online presence? Ads perhaps? I can't remember the last time I saw a LDS Commercial on a major cable TV network. Is the Church abandoning TV adds for some reason?

Congratulations James!

True, you did not say those things. But you seem like quite the proponent of celebrating your sense of gender-superiority. It would be wrong to say or imply that men are more important than women. It would be equally wrong to say or imply that women are more important than men. Obvious that you want to make it abundantly clear that men are much, much more important than women. So I draw that train of thought to it's logical conclusion (putting women back in their place) and you called me a liar for it. You seem to be on a crusade, but I'm at a loss as to what the Crusade is for. Consider this gem of confusing nonsense: So ... exactly what are you driving at? Women had rights because they were allowed to live? And this ties into the topic how? Granted, women having the right to live is important, but I would say it's much to get all excited about. A man kept prisoner inside a latreen has a right to live, but I think we can all agree that his life sucks. I'm confused as to where you're going with your points. That women have enough rights and shouldn't be given more? That men are a lot better than women, so women don't deserve any special consideration? I truly don't know where you're going with all this.Women have spend the entirety of human history with significantly fewer rights than men, yet there has not been a good reason for this. Mostly excuses, enforced by the fact that men were stronger, so women couldn't make much fuss over being made less than equal. This is obviously true. My contention is that this is, was, and will always be wrong. Unrighteous dominion. Far too often, men taking control where they had no business controlling. Is your contention that I'm wrong to believe this? Or is there some other point you're trying to make here that I'm just not following?

Maybe we can have my wife verify that I'm a man.

Bolded the parts that are concerning to me. Okay, so Jason hates the Church. What of it? Has he forbidden you to have anything to do with the Church? If he has, he loses some serious points in my book. It ain't much of a man who tells the woman in his life what she can and cannot do, especially when he hasn't even had the decency to marry yet. If you would need to sneak around in order to participate in the Church and it's because of Jason, then Jason isn't much of a man at all. Now what I'm hoping is that this is not the case and that you are just being nervous over nothing. If that is the case, then it would be wrong for you to do anything less than making yourself and your family as happy as possible. You know the first step. Do not be afraid. Any fear you feel now is there because Satan loves to use fear to keep you miserable. 2Nephi 2:27 " 27 Wherefore, men are free according to the flesh; and call things are given them which are expedient unto man. And they are free to choose liberty and eternal life, through the great Mediator of all men, or to choose captivity and death, according to the captivity and power of the devil; for he seeketh that all men might be miserable like unto himself. " The devil wants you to stay miserable for the rest of your life. God wants you to be happy. You get to pick which one you want to be. All you have to do is choose to overcome your fears and start down the path to repentance. Can you think of anything more worthwhile than being reconciled with God and being truly happy again??

So what you are saying is that it is important to put women in their place, tell them they're destined to never ever be as important as men?? Has the time come to drive them all back to where they belong -- pregnant, barefoot and in the kitchen? I think that's arrogant bigoted nonsense. And if a prophet of God has said that motherhood is the highest of all callings and this upsets you, I suppose you should write to Salt Lake and set them all straight. There are a TON of men in the Church of Jesus Christ of Latter Day Saints who need to pull their heads out of their backsides when it comes to their attitudes towards women. A truly sad statistic is this. A study was done among several religious groups to determine which had the highest incidence of spousal abuse occurring at some point in a marriage (in other words, who beats their wives and who doesn't.) The results: Catholics: 16% Mormons: 15% Protestants: 14% Jews: 6% I'd call the results of that study an embarrassment. Granted, no faith is perfect, but still ... what are we doing wrong and what are Jews doing right? More importantly, if we are not better than all other religions in this matter, then it means there's a problem with the men of the LDS faith. It means that a serious attitude adjustment is in order. I've known of a lot of men in the LDS Church who get the ridiculous notion in their tiny brains that the Priesthood makes them hot stuff and that women are destined to serve and obey them for all eternity. The trouble with that is that they're dead wrong. Ultimately, all 4 of the faiths above SHOULD BE 0%. Since they are not 0%, we should be asking ourselves why. I think we know why. Men just need to change their attitudes BIG TIME.

Does the Holy Spirit come in dreams? Yes. Do I know what 7 things are being spoken of? No, I can't think of anything off the top of my head. By the way, the seven deadly sins are not recounted anywhere in the Bible. I think that whoever came up with them was very insightful, but it's not Biblical.