mordorbund

Just in case you'd like to read old opinions on a similar thread: http://www.lds.net/forums/general-discussion/49712-apostles-autographs.html

Why do you have an invisible jet when you can fly?

KountC, As an outsider, could you tell me about the sacraments? Specifically, what are they? Is there any sort of division or hierarchy among them (some being more important than others - dominical and such)? Is there a "natural" or desired order for them? Should I be asking something else here?

<claps hands giddily> Oh goodie, a trilogy!

Would you mind writing up a review and whether it's worth the read? I'd like to know if I should add it to my queue.

Last summer I went to a Justin Timberlake / JayZ concert. Can you guess who I went to see?

President Uchtdorf's remarks come to mind:

Amazon insiders tell me it won't be since they mixed up the birthday packages. Next time you see Kim Jong-un he'll have on a nerdy t-shirt. Vort, on the other hand, has no use for a warhead unless we chip in and get him a .

The biggest problem I have with computer solitaire is that it won't let me cheat. I thought the rules of the game include a proviso that when you get stuck you can pull a card you need and go on from there.

Sorry that wasn't me. Lesson learned.

Whoa! What's this "used to be" business? Shop is still open for Palerider. Pro tip: put the money on the lazy susan under the table. [checks Palerider's status] huh. I guess I was wrong. I'd like a refund Mr. Palerider.

I knew it!!

I'm using Vort's summaries because I think they represent the points well. 1. Young men who are socially immature ought not serve full-time missions. I think there's some truth to this. A missionary should be properly prepared for a mission. That means that he should already be thinking about preparing for and serving a mission before he turns 19 (or 18). Some good ways for parents and leaders to aid this preparation includes inviting the missionaries over for dinner. This provides exposure to full-time missionaries and missionary work and provides an opportunity to interview missionaries about the day-to-day experience. If you do this regularly, you'll get to see a variety of missionaries and realize they aren't cut from the same cookie-cutter. sharing your own mission stories. There's a reason why veteran missionaries love their missions. Don't keep it a secret. assigning strong home teaching companions to the young man, and include part-member and inactive families in the route. This is probably the closest you'll get to simulating mission experience without serving a mission. Of course, this would include the young man making appointments and teaching the lessons. inviting friends and family of other faiths into your home to visit with the missionaries. This shows the missionaries in action, while illustrating the value you place on the work itself. Most, if not all of these have already been institutionalized in the wards and branches I've attended. Ultimately, the young man needs to prepare himself so that when he is of mission age he is prepared. As a parent, I feel the responsibility to prepare my own sons as well, but I recognize that it will be their own decision. Having said that, if my child showed up to kindergarten and wasn't potty trained, who bears the responsibility? Knowing that there's an expectation there doesn't mean I start training mid-August for a 5 year-old. Knowing the expectation means I start preparing him early to meet it. As I deal with older children, they assume more of their own responsibility to see that they fulfill future duties. 2. Mormon culture's emphasis on serving a mission is dangerous and misleading. I would compare the priesthood duty of serving a mission to the priesthood duty of blessing and passing the sacrament. When you take on the priesthood, you do your duty. I have no daughters or sisters, so I'm speaking hypothetically here and defer to those who do. If I had a daughter or sister who was dating I would tell her to find a man who honors his priesthood, and a good bellwhether for that was to see if he was fulfilling his duties. If she's a young woman, she should see if he's blessing and passing the sacrament. It's the most visible example avalailable. If he isn't, then she needs to make sure she's comfortable with the reason that he isn't. If she's a single adult, she can ask about his mission. If he hasn't served, then she needs to make sure she's comfortable with the reason that he didn't. In looking for a potential spouse, I want her to find someone who will fulfill his priesthood duties in the home: giving blessings, baptizing children, rearing them in the gospel. As an equal opportunity hater, I tell my brothers the same thing: do your duty. And that includes being prepared to act. It's some of the best advice I can give on being a man. 3. Member missionay work is important; we should be finding investigators for the missionaries to teach. No arguments from me here.

I got to thinking about this again last night, and I got to wondering what's everyone's interest in this? I myself was born into the post-ban Church. Growing up, my dad would tell me mission stories about the discretion they had to use in Brazil for building the Church. I can't recall him talking about his experiences with the ban getting lifted. That's not to say that he didn't, I just didn't really hold an interest in the topic growing up. It was history (fairly modern, but history nonetheless). The more I think about it, I suppose I was exposed to the impact here and there. As a young teenager in the South, I knew a few black families in our small branch. My dad shared on one occasion how impressed he was with one of the father's testimony - that he continued faithful even as all his friends continued to ask him why he went to "that white church". I don't have any skin in the game (don't read a pun in a place it's not intended), so I can dispassionately throw my ideas in the arena and let them get shredded. That being said, I do participate in the discussions when I feel like general authorities are getting thrown under a bus (and of course I need to feel like there will be some impact). My model for sustaining our leaders is David's example. When he was on the run, who should wander into his cave but Saul! David stealthily cut off the hem of Saul's clothes and resumes hiding. Later he reveals that he could have killed Saul but did not because he would not harm the Lord's anointed. David had every right to kill him: Saul reneged on past agreements, was jealous of his honor, was actively trying to kill him, and David was already told by the prophet that Saul was rejected and he would be sole monarch. But he would not harm the Lord's anointed. This example has impressed me to the point where, if there is the smallest amount of wiggle room to allow for it, I side with the general authorities. I recognize that this is perhaps an ultra-loyal perspective, but it is the model I use. So I come into these discussions with more of an interest on the ways the topic is used to discredit previous prophets and modern ones. And that leads me down Suzie and JAG's rabbit holes to understand the topic better that's the catalyst for another conversation. Timpman, if you don't mind sharing, what is your interest in the priesthood ban? I get the feeling that for you it is more than academic. Were you or a close friend or family member affected by it? Or are you driven by Christian empathy? If you'd rather not say here, I can respect that.

Suzie beat me to it, but the almost 2 year old statement is essentially an abbreviated version of the more recent one. "The Church is not bound" to the old theories, but nothing on whether or not they are false. The Holland quote is a new one on me though (maybe I should start cooking ham). I would describe it as a distancing, specifically that it wholly loses whatever official status it once held. Merriam-Webster online has it as I think we agree that the Church does not acknowledge these doctrines as true, nor does it accept them. The Church is severing its connection with them. That's the official party line. I would go further to state that it does not mean that they aren't true. It means the church body has not received divine direction on it one way or the other. Looking again at your definition, "disown" is probably the best synonym in my mind for this example. The Church has cut the old theories loose.

I'll just go ahead and ban myself as I show myself out.

Any other pet peeves while you're at it?

If a teaching has been disavowed, that simply means it is no longer a teaching of the Church - that doesn't change the validity of the teaching. (If a State disavows a rogue agent and his actions, it is not a statement that the actions are no longer favorable for the State, nor even that State wasn't about to send an agent to perform those exact actions). It could very well be true that some persons lived the premortal equivalent of a terrestrial existence and so merited entrance into God's kingdom but not any official authority. It's possible that Ham was cursed and it continued until 1978. It could be possible that Brigham was a product of his time and based the ban solely on prevailing notions or expediency. None of these are current Church teachings. Each one is disavowed. But any one of them may be true. What's more, some of the true statements can be read as having an expiration date. Of course this is absolutely true today. There is no priesthood ban. So let's assume one of the disavowed theories is actually true. Let's go with the ever-popular curse of Cain. When the ban was lifted the curse was lifted too. Black skin is not a sign of divine disfavor.

I think we make of it that the Lord has, in times past, precluded certain familial lines from the priesthood. Righteous Pharaoh (as opposed to Abraham's murder-stabby Pharaoh) was of a lineage that banned him from the priesthood (I'm a little fuzzy on the particular offense - vs. 21 and 22 refer to a line through Ham's son Canaan, which would tie it Gen. 9 (although that curse isn't expressly priesthood related), but vs. 25 ties the line through Ham's daughter Egyptus), and subsequent pharaohs were also denied the priesthood. The scriptures don't teach when that ban was ever lifted. I'm aware of the tradition that Ham married a descendant of Cain, but I have no idea where that idea came from, so the traditional idea that Ham is the progenitor of blacks is unscriptural (Abraham doesn't use the term black, JAG, that's Enoch describing Cain's progeny). Another similar example to Pharaoh's ban is the Levitical restriction. For the most part, priesthood ordination and service was limited to descendants of Levi, with a further restriction that only descendants of Aaron serve as high priests. I say for the most part, because there's the obvious exception of prophets and kings having authority to dedicate temples and offer sacrifice. You could not hold the priesthood if you were born in the wrong family. Now take a moment to look over your patriarchal blessing. Ephraim? Manasseh? Judah? NotLevi? The restriction was not lifted until about 34 AD, about a millennium and a half later. I think the Church can safely continue teaching that there have been other times when the priesthood was limited by lineage, and we are blessed to live in a time when there is no such ban or restriction based on family lines.

If her family is like my family, you misunderstood why we declined the emblems. When we run late to church - so late that we miss the sacrament prayer - we have not properly prepared ourselves for the Lord's supper. Bytebear is correct, My way of teaching this lesson to my children (and remembering it myself) is that if we skip the remembrance part, then we skip the act as well (my children are in junior primary, as they get older they'll get to use more of their discretion).

Suzie, I'm sending out a great big "thank you" to you and Just_A_Guy for staying so cool and level-headed. Your civil discourse has really let the content shine through on your discussion.

Isn't "swashbuckling" a related term? I'm pretty sure it is. You've done something right if I feel like Errol Flynn after a date. And if I'm hitting on you, the proper response is either a blush or a swoon. Both are acceptable.

Did... did Utah just slide down the slippery slope backwards?

My thoughts from a different discussion earlier this week (with much overlapping) with Anaheim veteran missionaries (that's why Marvin Perkins comes up): I know I'm coming late to the party, but I thought I'd add a little diversity by playing Young's advocate (with a proper nod in <other person>'s direction for starting down this path). The simple fact is that we don't know why the ban was ever in place. We don't know if it was a matter of revelation or policy (read the Kimball paper in the footnote and you'll see that a search was made and the origin was downgraded from revelation to uncertain). That's not to say there wasn't revelation along the way on the matter. The recent statement even calls out President McKay made it a matter of prayer (and the Kimball paper even specifies that the answer he got was "not yet"). That was in the 50's before the American civil rights movement hit full sway. Perkins makes it clear that he thinks the Lord's hands we're tied so long as Elder Lee was alive, but that presupposes that he would not have the same reaction that Elder McConkie experienced when the revelation was received (and his strong opinions were in print for all the world to see). At most, regarding the ban itself, Church leaders could tentatively apologize for the origin (provided it was only policy (I can see no reason to apologize for revelation)), but not for sustaining the practice. That then brings us to the justifications for the practice. Perkins is right here, there was a vacuum. It was uncomfortable and people wanted answers for "why" and "how long" (the article even points out that Brigham was aware the ban was temporary). So Brigham filled that void. Joseph Fielding Smith and Bruce McConkie filled that void. Alvin Dyer filled that void. It's not unlike the WoW where the Lord has only revealed certain prohibitions for our "temporal salvation" because of "conspiring men". We have filled in the blanks ourselves with carcinogens, known cover-ups, tannic acid, and even (heaven help us) caffeine. Then came the revelation. That same year, Elder McConkie said to CES what was essentially stated at the end of this new article: forget everything that was said on this subject before June 1978, as they didn't have the full picture. I consider this a good thing that the article has expanded the audience and repeated it afresh. And I hope I'm not stirring the pot too much (other's have already read between the lines, so I will too for a moment) when I point out that the term used here is "disavow", as opposed to when President Kimball "denounce"d the Adam-God theory in the 1976 conference and called it out as "false doctrine" (a term markedly absent here). So now here we are, with the "how long" finally answered, but the "why" still remains an uncomfortable mystery. And so voices come in to fill the vacuum. I imagine that's where your additional questions are coming from. Perkins has pointed out some flaws in the old chestnuts (I find some of his rebuttals specious, but other's are valid). But rather than living with the void, others swoop in with their own pet theories, each of which come with their own flaws: Brigham was racist (as was everyone of his time), but not so racist as to insist the ban was permanent, nor racist enough to remove all the black priesthood holders (he did get rid of some); white people couldn't handle it (if the Church "unequivocally condemns" the racist notion that blacks couldn't or wouldn't handle it, how can it not unequivocally condemn the racist notion that a zion-building white folk couldn't or wouldn't handle it?); and so on. The safe path here for those questioning is a firm "I don't know". The Church has disavowed the old theories without endorsing any of the new (tacitly, there's a bit of Brigham-as-a-product-of-his-time, but it also seems to have a bit of double-speak by limiting that influence). If that remains unsatisfactory, then you need to do what others have done, which is to study it out and include prayer. And if it helps, here are some theories that have been put out there (and I think you should even include the disavowed-but-not-denounced ones). Just recognize that whatever answer you settle upon is yours and not the Church's, which awaits further light and knowledge.

As a matter of clarification, there are scriptural examples of mortals who reached biblical levels of perfection in mortality. http://www.askgramps.org/12659/perfection-2