Carborendum

I think you may be right. Notice the heart reaction. Yeah, Pam and MrShorty... KIDDING!!!

We can play with words and origins a lot. I've studied these words (predestination, fore-ordination) many times and pondered them for many years. Bottom line: Etymologically, they are identical. Usage and definition are whatever we want them to be within that overall concept. The idea of predestination (per many evangelicals I've had the pleasure to know) indicates that either Choice does not exist. We're just mindless automatons moving through a pre-determined set of thoughts and actions that God has set up. Choice may exist, but God has already set things up that it is predetermined what choices we will make, so our choices are already made for us. With many debates over the differences, I have found that we keep going in circles on the differences, or which is accurate. At the end of the day, I have faith that I have a mind that God has given me to determine right from wrong. And I have the freedom to choose good over evil. And it is those choices that will determine my eternal destiny. We are not railroaded into our decisions. We all have plenty of time to consider our own wishes, what are the desires of our hearts. And we will be judged on the exercise of our agency based on the light we've been given.

I'm getting the shift outta here. I mean, I'm getting rid of my Nissan Versa (a clutch) and buying a car with a continuously variable transmission.

Korihor knew better. He knew, but would not know. He saw a freaking angel. But the "angel" said there was no God? Then what is an angel if it is not a ministering being from God? He was apparently educated enough to be able to think logically. But he didn't take the time to consider, "Hey, a divine being just came and told me there are no divine beings." Uh-huh. He sure didn't know what he was doing. No sir. Yup, I'll buy that for a dollar.

I always knew you were a thrill seeker.

LoL! Nice Try.

I now have three returned missionaries under my roof, and one out in the field. It is interesting to see the "mellowing" of each of them by way of their mission experience. My daughter has a greater propensity for being social and going to friends houses for a visit. She's also much more ready to stand up for herself. I'm not saying she's ready to run for President yet. But she is definitely more confident and outgoing. My two sons were probably polar opposites from a personality perspective. My eldest son was "the grump" of the family. It was difficult to get him to smile about anything. But he has been easily falling into smiles and has let himself get excited in anticipation for some things yet to come. He's also just a lot more polite and understanding of people's weaknesses. He's a certified genius (smarter than the rest of the family put together - myself included). So, it was very easy for him to get frustrated at others' lack of understanding of things that seemed very basic to him. My second son was the happy son. It seemed that is default mode was to have a genuine smile on his face. And if anything was even remotely funny, he would burst out laughing. I think I could count on the fingers of one hand the number of times that he was in a sad mood. Today, he has a "moderate" mood as a default. But he still laughs at nearly any joke. It just so happens that they are all now at the phase where they need to get out on their own. So, I've brought each of them in for a talk about charging rent starting some time next year. That gives them some time to get things organized and so forth. And if they don't do so by the deadline, the rent won't be all that much. But it will increase periodically to motivate them to get out on their own. Each of them have varying levels of preparation as well as different plans on how they are going to make their mark on the world. It is exciting to see their gears working.

Wait, wait, waitaminute... So, you're saying that staying up to all hours of the night and sitting in a single position just staring at your phone for 15 minutes wasn't entertaining?

The idea that you're going to lose all your muscles on your mission is probably not correct. I had a companion who was a state level wrestler in high school. He also worked on the family dairy farm and baled plenty of hay. He was a stark contrast to my then 125 lb, 5'-7" frame. He was only an inch taller with about 60 more lbs. And it was all muscle. He maintained 4% body fat. In his 30 min exercise time, he'd make good use of it. He'd simply do the standard push-ups, sit-ups, and other calisthenics -- and a whole lot of isometrics. He also did something that I've never seen before or since. It was somewhat similar to a plank. But it was in a very strange position which I can't easily describe. He did this faithfully for his 2-years and never lost his physique for all I could tell as his companion of four months and additional visits during mission conferences. Of course, he probably didn't keep his 4% body fat. But it was still low enough that you could clearly see he was muscled, not fat. And you can bet that he got right back into it after his mission. So, unless you're SO muscled that women might judge whether you've crossed the line between "well muscled" vs "muscle-bound" you probably won't have a problem. Yes, it is true, each woman draws their own line at different looks. But they definitely do have a line where the "muscle-bound" becomes synonymous with "muscle-head". And that's something you probably want to avoid for the ladies.

In the French version of the BoM, they replace the "it came to pass" with an asterisk. On the first page of 1 Ne, we see the footnote to which it refers. And it says, "In the English version, the phrase 'it came to pass' is repeated quite often. So to save space, we've chosen to represent this phrase with the *." (I'm both paraphrasing and translating, of course). So, instead of "et il passait que" we see "et * ". This was the first time I realized that there were other words beside "and" which preceded it. "Then it came to pass" or "And then it came to pass", "Wherefore, it came to pass" etc. (As you say, we tend to just stop registering it.) The result was that the book was about 1/32" thinner than the English copy. But that may be more than we realize since English is a slightly more efficient language than French.

???

Yup. I had similar experiences, myself. And I've seen the FFR foundation issue lawsuits to keep a Santa Claus display off of school grounds. Santa isn't even religious. He's the secular version of Christmas. There was NOTHING religious about the display. But FFR thought it was offensive enough to file a lawsuit.

Did anyone else know this was even a word before Vort put this up here?

Well, at least @zil2 did. Thanks, Zil.

I guess, sometimes my jokes aren't as funny as I think they are.

Uhmmm. Can't tell if you're now running it through the chain of malaprops exercise. You said that was the name of the half-breed animal. Then you said it was a Chameleon, bringing up a tune from Culture Club. So... J: It's called a cama. Carb: You mean the punctuation mark? J: No that's a kind of pause. Carb: You mean the chameleon? J: No, that's Karma. Carb: Wait isn't that a...

What language was Lisa speaking at the end? I couldn't make it out.

and the cama - "pause"

We understand that the proper nouns in the Book of Mormon were transliterations rather than translations. Records show that whenever Joseph came to a proper noun, he gave the transliteration. Then through other means at another time, Joseph indicated the pronunciation. If it was a transliteration, then we have an alternate translation from the Egyptian/Hebrew hybrid language. Egyptian has a term "nty" (sometimes used as a prefix) which means of the. In today's English vernacular, we might say with the. And the combining of two names in this manner is indicating a son-father relationship. Thus it would be a label for a people who are with the people of Nephi (son of) Lehi. EDIT: I see you found something similar. Yes, that's about right.

The term "Outer Darkness" is not completely unknown to sectarians. It is used three times in the Gospel of Matthew.

I can't tell if my joke went over your head or if ...

I'm sorry, but I had to pause for a moment to think about that. I'll alert the cartels.

I would say: Verse 6 explicitly says it was the "first year of the judges". Alma 1:1 explicitly states that the first year was also the year Mosiah died. Mosiah 29:3 & Alma 17:6 states that Aaron (the eldest son) was already in the Land of Nephi on his mission at the time that succession should have taken place. And because Aaron would not take the kingdom, Mosiah proposed the system of judges. Therefore, it all happened within the same year. This could mean the same calendar year, or it could mean the same 365 day period.

Better late than never.