Fether

From what a friend of mine explained to me, Tom is somewhat symbolic of a Christ figure. That he is not just some half elf hair dwarf, but a god or something that only appears at the end of the world (and since the war if the ring was about to start, he showed up). Could be making all that up, never read more than the Lord of The Rings series

Essentially yes. Even with those capital punishments the Israelites struggled keeping to God’s laws. Remove the punishments and I’m sure Baal would have been the preferred God. Similar thoughts go through my mind, but I think we can look to Nephi’s experience with Laban as a comparison. “It is better that one man should perish than that a nation should dwindle and perish in unbelief.” (1 Nephi 4:13). Sure, maybe thousands were stoned and killed, but that allowed for generation after generation of other righteous Israelite.

Remember, Moses left the Israelites for only a short amount of time and he came back and had abandoned the Lord and began worshipping Baal. Almost any opportunity the Israelites had they were intermixing with other religions and adopting other’s beliefs. I don’t think the Israelite religion would have lasted two generations if there were no strict laws in place. This also explains the genocides that God commanded the Israelites to participate in. I think our understanding of death is skewed. We as humans naturally believe that all blessings and cursing are to be had on Earth. So when someone dies, we ask “why?!?”. In the grand scheme of things, death is nothing more than traveling from one state of existence to another. Killing someone who sins is probably not ideal, but If that is what it takes to keep the gospel in the earth, then I imagine it is worth it.

Ask for help. I was a torment to my mother and father st church when I was a toddler. I would get pawned off to the bishop’s wife every week. Now I have a child and I know dozens of people that would love to watch my kid (he is actually a pretty stinking cute baby and we have a lot of sisters that debate over who gets to home and watch him). if you don’t know anyone, ask the bishop or relief society president you will get the help you need.

I love this 👍

For me, this begs the question (and not the rhetorical meaning of begging the question, what I mean is that this explanation is begging me to ask a specific question), why bring up Mary at all?

I recently commented on this earlier, but I am fasting weekly now for health benefits. But a fast just focused on health includes drinking water. So to make it spiritual, I remove the water too. I completed a 24 hour fast last Wednesday and I was fasting for success as I traveled to California for a week of work. So far it has been the most beneficial trips I have made for work. All credit goes to God.

In all honesty... when I went through and made the temple covenants my thought was “didn’t I already make these at baptism?”. Its all just a reemphasis on covenants you have already made in the church. There is nothing new or that will surprise you except for perhaps the ceremony itself. If at any point you don’t want to covenant to something, you can stand up and walk out. It would likely make a minor scene, but it is an option. but without each of the covenants, you cannot be endowed and receive those blessings.

*shrug* Perhaps, as you mentioned they didn’t obey that policy recently with a 10 year old, they have been going against the policy for a while now and are now deciding to make things right and you just happened to be the person caught in the repentance process.

I completely agree. It’s a case by case thing. That is why the self help books can’t go around teaching step moms to take the place of the moms.

I don’t think the problem lies in the way you see your step children, but rather how does the real mom feel about your strong feeling s that you are the real mom. This answer may vary depending on the nature of how those children became your step children. to be honest and frank, we can’t be having step moms everywhere believing that their step children are more theirs than the real mom

More likely... Anakin used mind trick to get Padme to love him

I agree with this completely. The Netflix Clonewars series (which takes place between II and III) do a fantastic job of getting you to fall in Love with the goodness of Anakin, but also keeps you aware if the little darkness that is inside him. But there is far more goodness seen in Anakin in the Netflix series than there is in episode II and III.

Sure, I’m not so sold on the idea that I’m ganna argue about it, and my original statement holds without this tidbit.

Where is that written in the scriptures? I think you may be incorrect. I can’t remember where, but Hugh Nibley suggests that they are distant relatives of some sort and explains his reasoning behind the belief

It’s more of a “judging other’s typed comments when they have never met before too quickly” article. in his defense, he doesn’t know Vort he wouldn’t know what kind of character Vort had. All he had to go off of was the article and Vort’s comment

Also, pegging others as “snowflakes” only seems to justify insulting them further. Similar to pegging someone as a fascist/nazi to justify attacking them.

*shrug* don’t know enough about Hebrew. I would assume so, but I don’t know. FolkProphet already slightly moved me away from this example with his comment.

I totally agree, I like everything you said about Marxism. I thought it was very honest and well thought out. My biggest complaint, however, was when you said I don’t think it is selfish to desire financial security. Grant Cardon made a point that when we don’t have money, the only people we can financially impact for the better is ourselves. But the people with the most money are the ones that can freely change lives, donate large sums of money to their church (he isn’t a Latter-day Saint so money donations are probably more important than they are in our massively wealthy church) and offer the greatest service to those in need. Being wealthy is an amazing thing, but not when it becomes the only thing.

The problem I have with comments like these is that there is this under-tone of “being rich is inferior to being middle class”. You said: In this, you also assume they are not working and benefiting society. It’s a massive fallacy in every culture that you must give up relationships and spirituality in order to make money. In truth, when coupled with financial intelligence and courage, wealth grows greatly as our moral and spiritual life grows. The rich don’t just sit on their butts all pull from a seemingly endless fountain of $100 bills. They are rich cause they leveraged their money and took risks no one else would. They are the ones that invested in small business, own the rentals much of America lives in, and put it all on the line to better themselves and their family (not all of them of course). saying the rich are less fulfilled than you are is just being short sighted. I had a similar attitude forever. But then I discovered that the Truly wealthy people are some of the most self mastered, productive, motivated and often times deeply religious people I aspire to be like. There are MANY wealthy people that believe and live some of the most moral and clean lives. Many of the greatest and wealthiest people in the world know pornography is evil, love their family, believe in God, get up at 4:30 in order to take care of their bodies and minds through exercising and reading. ...Now, I’ll leave my soap box right her just Incase I need to get back on it.

Do you believe God already knows who these people are that will be evil?

So do you believe God is trying to find out who will be good and who will be evil? THEN he will destroy the wicked?

Regardless, do you believe Satan has the power to prevent Hid from getting rid of him? You claim evil is here purely because Lucifer rebelled against God and that evil was not meant to be a part of the plan. So does that mean God is unable to remove Satan? Is Satan to strong for God?

I don’t think a measly little Lucifer is strong enough to create evil where it wasn’t meant to exist. Sure, maybe it didn’t need to happen the way it did, but I can’t fathom how a child of God rebelled in such a way that it forces evil upon the earth when God himself did not want it here. That backs my immature childhood belief that Satan has some power over God. Otherwise, why would he be here if it wasn’t in line with God’s original plan? If God needed to, he could have removed Satan and all his followers from existence. But he didn’t. Why? Because evil needs to exist for us to choose good. btw... the plans mentioned above seem to be approaching Satan’s plan. To have no choice between good and evil, but rather be forced to choose good.

I see that, I just don’t want another voice saying “pray the gay away”. We can’t have this idea being the go-to response to people struggling with homosexual tendencies