mordorbund

Great news everyone! The problem is solved!
 
Last year President Obama donated almost $60k of his $500k income as "gifts to charity". That's 12%!
The Clintons, back in 2000, donated $10.2M of their $109M income. That's a little more than 9%!
Back in 2011, the Romneys donated $4M of their $20.9M income. That's 19%!
 
So it looks like wealthy people are contributing MORE than the 4% needed to solve the problem of poverty.
 
I like this thread too much to see it die. So what do you guys think? Why are we still hearing about poverty when it clearly doesn't exist anymore? Is it a 1984-style propaganda thing? An effort to maintain control and power? Is it because we all need a common enemy to unite us? Or are we simply uncomfortable with an abundant world? If this truth were to get out, would we star-belly sneetch a selection of us so we could still have problems in paradise?

The thing about it being done organizationally is that enough in the organization must already be one heart and one mind. Otherwise, disharmony ensues. In 1833, the saints were chastises for falling short in this. They were not one heart and one mind. The Lord gave them a parable to explain this. But their reason for failing to establish Zion was:
 
 
If we can learn to let go of all our material possessions, all of which belong to God, and learn to truly become one heart and one mind, we would not ever suffer anyone within our reach to go cold or hungry. To be righteous is to be just. To live righteously is to live justly. We fall short of this from the greatest to the least. Who will be the light of the world if not us?

Actually I don't think it really matters too much whether it is done organizationally, or individually.
I do think that individual responsibility is given to the individual regardless of which method is used.

From and LDS perspective, or at least from a Nephite perspective, the poor were taken care of by everyone. Jacob spoke about it, condemning his brothers for searching and digging for gold and lifting themselves up in pride when they obtained more than others. King Benjamin preached by example, what the greatest in the kingdom should do. Time and time again the true and faithful of the people in the Book of Mormon imparted of their substance to the poor and the needy. They gathered together often to fast and to pray and to succor those who stood in need. They understood the principle of consecration.
 
 
Both! Until individuals learn to become Zion, Zion will not be established. Zion is where all are pure in heart, live in righteousness and where no poor live among them. All are equal in temporal things. They have all things common. If they cannot be equal in temporal things, the Lord does not make them equal in heavenly things. We are not Zion. We claim to be the true church, but we are still individuals with individual pursuits. Many of us have covenanted to live the law of sacrifice. But how many of us have covenanted by sacrifice? We pay according to the law of tithing, though we have covenanted to live a higher law. What is stopping us from living the higher law today? Who is rising up? 
 
Are we waiting for a leader to rise up to tell us it is now time? Why isn't that time right now? Why wasn't it when we were baptized? There are some who live the law of consecration today with all their hearts and with all their strength, abasing ourselves to minister to and lift others up. This is what King Benjamin exemplified. This is what Joseph Smith exemplified. Let us rise up individually and sell all that we have, give to those within our reach and rather than covenanting to sacrifice, covenant by sacrifice. Perhaps then, heaven will finally take notice and we can begin to build Zion.

John Gee has written about Abrahamic astronomy as a reflection of ancient views: "And I Saw the Stars": The Book of Abraham and Ancient Geocentric Astronomy.
 
What's missing in this paper is something he's shared in lecture. Facsimile 3 shows Abraham teaching the Egyptians about astronomy, and the Egyptians held the belief that if A circumscribes B, then A is greater than and governs B.
 
Now, from the paper:
 
 
 
And the conclusion from the lecture, was that Kolob, circumscribing all, was greater than all (except the throne of God, which is even greater). So the conclusion Abraham would be driving at with the Egyptians is that as powerful as their local gods are, they are magnitudes inferior to the True God of Abraham (and this sort of teaching is consistent with traditions of Abraham zealously fighting idol worship).

That's where they stand up and give an inspirational 20-minute lecture in Spanish on how they prepared the meal.

I'm not sure 'requirement' is quite the right term. Caring for the poor and needy, to me at least, is a natural corollary to Jesus' two great commandments, the sum of the Law, that we should 'love God', and 'love each other'. I cannot see how we might fulfill these commandments, and not care for the poor and needy. That said, I have no particular church, and see all Christianity as my fiefdom. From my perspective, from which I view many rich Christians in an age of hunger, I consider that Christendom as a whole does reasonably well in this regard, but has room for improvement. And will continue to have room for improvement, so long as there is still left a solitary malnourished child.
 
Best wishes, 2RM.

Great news everyone! The problem is solved!
 
Last year President Obama donated almost $60k of his $500k income as "gifts to charity". That's 12%!
The Clintons, back in 2000, donated $10.2M of their $109M income. That's a little more than 9%!
Back in 2011, the Romneys donated $4M of their $20.9M income. That's 19%!
 
So it looks like wealthy people are contributing MORE than the 4% needed to solve the problem of poverty.
 
I like this thread too much to see it die. So what do you guys think? Why are we still hearing about poverty when it clearly doesn't exist anymore? Is it a 1984-style propaganda thing? An effort to maintain control and power? Is it because we all need a common enemy to unite us? Or are we simply uncomfortable with an abundant world? If this truth were to get out, would we star-belly sneetch a selection of us so we could still have problems in paradise?

Then why does resurrection matter?

Both Edersheim and McConkie held the Traveler's opinion that the shepherds were tending temple-sheep.
 
Some additional thoughts:
 
http://askgramps.org/11162/shepherds-at-christmas
 

Pam is not the only one that can move them.
 
Hey look I am a do gooder 

Only close because you'll finish perfecting it later, right?

Here is my update on my progress from January 2014 until now:
 
4,201 pushups 
5,227 leg lifts  
1,416 curls since April 1st 2014
 
I looked in the mirror the other day and liked the progress I have made.  May I encourage all to forget the past if you are not doing well and start now to focus on the future for better health.

I doubt they were celebrating the immolation of a live rat. Rather, they were celebrating having figured out a way to take care of the problem.
 
I'm pretty sure we all agree that burning a rat to death is a bad thing. The difference of opinion is assigning evil thoughts or motivations to the missionary.
 
Actually, I think this is a good illustration of how fundamentally good and decent people can do horrific things, based largely on their own ignornace and fear.

We need to canonize some of these quotes from the General Authorities. Until we do, the definition of, and process for establishing doctrine is merely a policy (not doctrine) and subject to change on their whims.

We need to canonize some of these quotes from the General Authorities. Until we do, the definition of, and process for establishing doctrine is merely a policy (not doctrine) and subject to change on their whims.

I'm still waiting for a Carmen Sandiego movie. It would be presented in a format similar to the Law and Order series (scenes jumping from one location to the next with the Interpol detective interviewing random people). The plot would be something along the lines of a rookie Interpol cop flies solo on his first assignment after he discovers his partner is in the middle of an organized crime syndicate known for stealing various national treasures. Now working outside the rules, he's on a deadline to find out who is ultimately behind all of it and why. The film climaxes atop the Statue of Liberty where the criminal mastermind ups the ante to steal America's beloved monument! I call it Gumshoe (or Gumshoes if you want 2 rookies working together, I can live with that).

It is pointless in the context I was discussing it.
 
People are saying... "Well it was JUST a Policy not Doctrine."  as if that makes a difference on the impact and the importance to know and understand if it was of God.  Its kind of like debating if the Law of Moses was Policy or Doctrine.  Totally irrelevant to people trying to understand accept it as God's will. Even more so to those that lived during the time and had to comply with its requirements.  The Book of Mormon teaches even those that understood completely the Law of Moses and what God was trying to do with it. couldn't just skip it and live just the Doctrine.
 
Same with the Ban. Same with Joseph Smith being sealed to multiple women.  The important thing is not if it was policy or doctrine, because that does not matter compared the question of "Was it of God?"

I think mdfxdb at post 193 gives a good summation of the doctrine-versus-policy paradigm; though--as I've expressed earlier--I think it has its limits.  At the very least, we can't expect every Church leader from Joseph Smith onwards to have been referring to this paradigm when that leader referred to a particular teaching/practice as "doctrine" or "policy".  I think that when George Albert Smith uses the term "doctrine" in 1949, he means it in the generic sense of "a teaching of the Church"; not specifically as a facet of Mormon teaching/practice that will remain forever unaltered.
 
As for McConkie's statement:  We get so fixated on that one sentence, that we tend to forget the context. 
 
 
McConkie's "forget everything" admonition is clearly directed to a very narrow class of statements:  Statements to the effect that blacks would never receive priesthood blessings in mortality, which were obviously "contrary to the present revelation['s]" decree that "the long-promised day has come".
 
He is not throwing the prior policy under the bus.  In fact, he's not even distancing himself from the previous, speculative rationales that had been floated for the ban's existence in the first place.  In the very same talk, he observes:
 
 
Yowza! 
 
And post-1978 editions of Mormon Doctrine continued to embrace those concepts. The Church's efforts to distance itself from the old explanations is a very recent thing, coming most notably in venues like Elder Holland's 2010 interview for PBS' The Mormons (transcript here); a Newsroom statement in 2012 (here), and ultimately a limited disavowal of some specific theories in the recent Gospel Topics article (here).

I exercise for one and  a half hours at physical therapy 3 times a week. It's a full body workout with the last 15 minutes having the TENS unit on my knee with ice pack and on my back with heat pack. Once I am done with PT I will continue with my exercise plan.

I happened to succeed with my goal for 2014. I wanted to hex-bar deadlift 2 1/2 times my bodyweight which I did on Dec 11th lifting 400 lbs at a body-weight of 160 lbs. My intent sharing this being to hopefully showcase that it (fitness goals) can be done and possibly inspire others, I'm aware it may come off as bragging - I am pleased with myself though. Hopefully 2015 is a great year for the rest of you as well :)

What bugged me in particular with Lehi's crying repentance is that there's a perfectly good script for him to recite in 1 Nephi 1:8-14. You just need to put it in first person and modernify the language. C'mon writers, (or even Lehi-actor) you don't even have to do any work for this background-monologue!
 
Of course the book could be a solid film. You have 4 brothers in a black-ops mission. Their relationship breaks down as plans A & B fail tremendously. Plan C is your classic "I'm making this up as I go along" by the hero. And that's just the first 10 pages!

What, no Portal movie?
 
For such an awesome game, Portal's inferred backstory is really ugly and dark.

I've managed to kill this thread, but I'll continue anyway. Jethro (Moses' father-in-law) is described as the "priest of Midian" (Exodus 3:1) before Aaron and company were ordained High Priest or Priest "after the order of Aaron". So here's another priest running around with a different authority from Aaron. Is there any reason to suppose Jethro was not a high priest? After all, Jesus was "made an high priest after the order of Melchisedec." And nowhere does it say the Melchizedek was a high priest, he was "a priest of the Most High God." So either we have a separate order of the priesthood that has priests (why aren't there any more) and only one high priest (Jesus); or we have a separate order of the priesthood that uses the terms 'priest' and 'high priest' interchangeably, in which case there have been multiple high priests (even with 2 acting high priests under different orders in the days of Aaron and Jethro).
 
Regardless, something seems to be missing in the "royal priesthood" (how is that NOT a Melchizedek order reference) that lacks priests after the Melchizedek order.

You know, I appreciate the intent of the makers of the Book of Mormon Movie. I really do. But my buddy and I laughed our way through that movie, almost from the beginning. We had to. You either had to take it at face value and laugh at the unintended hilarity, or be so thoroughly disgusted that you left the movie theater after 45 minutes.
Nephi: Tongue-tied. All the scintillating personality of a used cardboard box. Lehi: Ineffective, wimpy, more or less insane. "Crying repentance" means going up to strangers on the street, shaking your hands in their face, and saying, "Repeeeeent!"? And would any patriarch, ancient or modern, have started every dialogue with his children by saying, "Your mother and I both love you all so very, very much"? It was simply painful to watch. Sam: Was Sam there? Kirby Heyborne was the biggest name in Mormon cinema at the time, yet his character got almost zero screen time and pretty much zero imporance in the film. Ishmael's daughters: Oh. I'm blushing just thinking about it. Laman: Okay, honestly, this character was not as laughable as the others. He actually pulled his weight for the most part, and the few effective scenes in the movie included him (e.g. the angel stops him from beating up Nephi and Sam). But the final scene of Cavemen Laman and Lemuel jumping around over a fire pretty much burned up all that goodwill. It could be done well. It really could. But that's not the movie to prove my point.