askandanswer

So is it the case that the term God is both a collective noun, referring to one organisation consisting of three Gods and a personal pronoun, referring to each member of that organisation? And now I'm starting to wonder where God's wife fits into things, and Christ's wife. What is their part or role? Is God, in the collective sense, composed of 5 individuals? Or perhaps God and His wife count as one individual and Christ and His wife count as one individual?

4 And they are aone God, yea, the very bEternal cFather of heaven and of earth. Does the use of the pronoun they in this verse add support to the idea that Jesus and His Father are, collectively, one God?

Its an odd situation where the Church of Jesus Christ of Latter-Day Saints is funding the missionary efforts of the Community of Christ.The next time I renew my temple recommend I'm going to be asked whether I support or promote any teachings, practices or doctrine contrary to those of The Church of Jesus Christ of Latter_Day Saints. If I'd provided just $1,000 to support the missionary efforts of a church whose missionaries taught that this was a false church I think I might have to answer yes to that question. I'm not going to say that the church should not have done this because its not my place to say such things. I'm just saying its an odd situation.

I have vague memories of reading about a discussion between the leaders of the two churches many decades ago in which the then Reorganised church offered to sell the LDS church the Kirtland Temple and the LDS church turning the offer down with the reason that the time would come that the Reorganised church would be so poor that they would give the Temple to us. It appears that that has not happened. Does anybody else recall something like this?

How interesting! I've never seen a baby wombat in a pouch before. Lots of joey kangaroos in pouches, but never a wombat.

We encountered this wombat wandering along the side of the road when we were on a trip to the south coast. It was unusual to see a wombat wandering around so close to a road during the day so we got out and had a closer look. Something, maybe us, must have scared it because suddenly it started running. I think it was heading for its hole. Unfortunately, I see far more dead wombats than live ones by the side of the road. There is a place about an hour from where I now live that does jumping crocodile tours. You can take a boat the size of a small ferry which puts you well above the water line or you can take what is commonly referred to as a "tinnie" which is a very small boat which puts you almost at the same level as the crocodils. We took the tinnie. This part of the Adelaide River has a very dense crocodile population. We saw about 10 crocs in less than a kilometer. https://www.adrenaline.com.au/tours/darwin/jumpings-crocodile-cruise-adelaide-river/

Its really hard to imagine a wombat maintaining that sort of speed for more than, at a guess, 90 seconds on flat ground. I suspect they would have considerable energy reserves given how fat they are and how little they generally move.

I thought that happened during covid. I know the mission I am living in shrunk to less than 20% of its normal size during covid.

I remember being amazed the first time I saw a wombat run. Until then I had only seen them move at a very slow pace. For a moment I thought it was chasing me and I got a bit worried , but when I changed direction it ran straight past me.

Since Christ is coming quickly, we can rule out the possibility that He's coming on the 904 bus from downtown.

I am quite sure that that is exactly what has been happening since at least 6 April 1830

My former stake has a mostly disused chapel that they have been able to hang on to for more than 10 years. The stake holds the occasional Relief Society event or YSA fast-breaker in that chapel to justify its retention and prevent it from being sold.

It sounds like the residents of this area are heeding the Lord's counsel in Isaiah 2 20 ¶ Go ye forth of aBabylon, flee ye from the bChaldeans, with a voice of singing declare ye, tell this, utter it even to the end of the earth; say ye, The Lord hath redeemed his servant Jacob.

Come, come, ye saints :_

I read Numbers 21 this morning and noted some similarities between Joseph Smith's multiple inquiries of the Lord on behalf of a friend and Balaam's several inquiries to the Lord on behalf of Balak. That incident might provide further context for interpreting/understanding what happened with Joseph and Martin.

The Branch that meets in the same chapel as my Branch has about 50 attendees on a good day. Its western and eastern boundaries both extend about 300 kilometers. Going south its about 250 km to the next Branch. Every time he comes up here the Mission President talks about having a Temple in this city of two Branches with a combined weekly attendance of about 160

So these people have really big feet?

So people would end up with nicely vacuumed feet? Is that a modern version of washing the dust off their feet?

That's a vacuum cleaner? It looks pretty awkward to use, no wonder it was so henryish!

Some semi-formed, highly speculative ponderings about light: Given their source, we can accept these verses as truth. If we could work out how they are true, I think it would revolutionise our understanding of astronomy, electo-magnetic energy, truth, information, and how it is conveyed. It might also improve our understanding of how the Spirit communicates with us. In these verses, God has given us the answers. We just need to work out the how. If I was a physicist studying the properties of light, Doctrine and Covenants 88 is where I would begin. When God has given us direct teachings and truth on a topic that we want to know about, I can see some disadvantages arising from not accepting and following those teachings. I suspect that one approach to studying the question of how physical light is/might be truth would be in looking more closely at the dual nature of light as both a particle and as energy. Light joins together in one thing the properties of a particle and the properties of energy. I think that the joining of two things into one - intelligence to spirit to create a soul, then soul to physical body, then two bodies merged into one through temple marriage to create a family, then sperm and egg combining to create a body - is main method God uses for bringing seperate things into a higher order of being. When I think of these verses I almost always immediately think also of the idea that God dwells in the midst of everlasting burning which sounds to me like a sun. A sun produces and emits more light than anything else - as does God. The other side of that thought is the idea that the place of least light, a black hole, where matter is stripped of its defining characteristics, sounds exactly like outer darkness, to which souls are consigned to be returned back to the condition they were in before they came into contact with God. (This is a diversion from the main topic but if it is the case that black holes are outer darkness, and that everything, including the remnants of those souls who are assigned there, eventually gets recycled, then perhaps what comes out of black holes - hawking radiation - might in some way be related to, or even be a form of, intelligence.) I suspect that either light is the medium through which truth is conveyed, or in ways yet to be worked out, light is truth. Verse 12 of the above refers to light filling the immensity of space. Light is a form of energy. The only thing I know that fills the immensity of space is the form of energy we refer to as the cosmic microwave background. I suspect that if you compare the properties of light/energy with the properties of truth/intelligence you might find enough similarities to have cause to start thinking that they might be the same thing. If we accept the idea that this universe started with the big bang, and maybe that's true and maybe its not, and that God played a part in enabling the big bang to happen, then that could be part of the explanation for how God created all truth, because light only came into existence as a consequence of the big bang.

I've always been inclined to take a literal interpretation to these verses but I just haven't figured out how.

Galatians chapter 6 2 Bear ye one another’s aburdens, and so fulfil the law of Christ. 9 And let us not be aweary in well doing: for in due season we shall breap, if we faint not.

This afternoon the counsellor in the District Presidency reacted to a discussion I had with the Branch President last night when I mentioned that church policies were meaningless in the face of a sub poena. In his text he reminded me again of what he claimed were the church's policies and asked me not to make any mention of this to the lawyer. On a seperate but related matter, one sad thing is that this person is due in court on Thursday. Such is the level of ongoing internal chaos in, and staff departures from, the Aboriginal organisation for legal aid, this guy hasn't seen a lawyer since his first court appearance in early December, no lawyer has been assigned to him, the organisation doesn't pick up the phone and even if you go to their office in person, as the counsellor in the District Presidency did today, you still can't find anyone who will talk to you. The organisation is in total meltdown and has been for many months.

When the missionaries saw what happened, they called the counsellor in the District Presidency, who had been the Branch President at the time this person was baptised about 7 months ago.The counsellor in the District Presidency called me the next day and told me what he had been told and asked me to attend the court hearing the next day. The fact that the missionaries saw it was repeated by the Branch President a week or so later.

Witnesses have nothing to fear, this case is far too trivial to attract anyone's attention or cause anyone except the accused to fear. The difficulty stems from the strongly held view/practice/policy, call it what you will, not to have missionaries involved in legal proceedings. I have a sort of out - I can say that I am simply following the directions of my Branch President. We had this conversation last night. And even though I don't feel comfortable with that decision I can uncomfortably follow it. Some of the potentially complicating factors are that both the man and the women at the centre were baptised about 6-7 months ago, the woman instigated the incident, but it was the man who was arrested because it was the woman who had visible signs of harm, the man wants to end the relationship, the woman wants it to continue, the man believes the woman's testimony is more likely to be favourable towards him if she believes that he wants to continue the relationship so he has an interest in maintaining that belief, whatever happens, both the man and the woman will continue to be in the same branch, the witness missionary was involved in bringing them into the gospel, I can't remember if he was the one who actually taught them, both the man and the woman have a form of apprehended violence order out against each other despite the fact that they have lived together for several years, and most of the charge arose not from the original incident, but what followed between the man and the police. And the police have sent him a bill of $60,000 dollars for damage he caused to their vehicle. That seems a totally unreasonable amount but I haven't seen the damage so I can't comment on that one. What made me go hmm was some initial thoughts along the line of how much can you leave out of a truthful statement before it becomes untrue.