Carborendum

Good point. My father, even as he was, expressed multiple times to me that by being sealed it was more than a piece of paper that bound us as father and son. It was bound by God. He repeatedly said this because he got it into his head that somehow I felt less loved because I was adopted. What he didn't realize was that I felt less loved because of how he treated me. It had nothing to do with adoption. And it wasn't just him. The whole family thought of me a s some sort of freak. And if I told you why, you'd think I was just arrogant. As far back as I can remember, I never felt any special familial bond with either family. Maybe that was due to my underlying psychology (I tended not to form bonds easily with anyone. - I only learned how to socialize properly in later adult life) or if it was a byproduct of adoption or a byproduct of familial interactions with both families. There just didn't seem to be any reason to consider them any differently than those I know through work or school. The family I'm raising is different because of my emotional, mental, temporal, spiritual, and financial investment into raising them. And I've made it abundantly clear that my bond with my wife is more than special. But the families I grew up in... To tell you the truth, I never wanted to be part of either family. Maybe that's why... well... a lot of good and bad. The sum total of what I can say about what I learned from them was: 1) Work. Work hard and long. 2) Be responsible for providing for your family. So, I give that credit where it is due.

Agreed.

I don't think my wife has ever corrected my grammar.

Regardless of what was ideal or not, the plan for my sister and me was originally to be with our biological parents. When that didn't happen, adoption became the option. Give that description of events to anyone, and the forensic assessment will be that adoption was "plan B" for my sister and me. No, it is not emotionally sensitive to call it a "plan B". But it is a fact. I have the rare position of being aware of what it was like to live in both families. So, consider these facts. My Korean mother fled because my father was too abusive to her. My father put my sister and me up for adoption because he did the math and figured that there was no way he could take care of us financially. He could have just abandoned us. Or he could have dropped us off at an orphanage. Instead, he chose to put us up for adoption. He felt it was the most responsible thing to do. Despite his abusive tendencies, he was aware of the concept of responsibility. He felt responsible for providing for us. When he realized he couldn't, he at least felt enough responsibility to try to find us a decent home so that we would be provided for by others. And in that era MANY Korean kids were being adopted by Americans. One criterion he had was that we had to be placed in a good Christian home. More details on that later. Arguments could be made (they have been made to my face) that he "abandoned us" by putting us up for adoption anyway. So, what is the difference? All the difference in the world. Would it have been more ideal had he kept us? I don't know. I recognize how difficult it is to have nothing and try to support a family. I also know how similar my birth father was to my adoptive father. I also know of some differences. I won't go into details -- too personal. In some ways my birth father was more abusive. In some ways my adoptive father was. There are so many pros and cons between the two homes. But living in America and having access to the blessings of this country is a benefit beyond anything I would have had in Korea. ***** As for being "Christian"... The family that helped us with the adoption told him that my adoptive family were Mormons. He had no idea what that was. But the family told them that Mormons were Christians. So, he felt ok. One of my brothers then decided to look into that faith. He was baptized some time later. To my knowledge, no one else in my birth family was baptized.

Calling me out, are ya? Well, I'll take up that gauntlet. I'm aware of tacking. And, yes, that was the explanation that was offered in the video I mentioned. However, this doesn't really change my point. This alternative actually makes my point. Learning more truths, doesn't invalidate earlier knowledge. It just complements it. But in that in-between phase, sometimes doubts can arise. I still don't think that the demonstration was really doing what they claimed.

I agree. It is simply too easy to just download a Windows version of the same games. I suppose it has the potential to be a collector's item. And it will have a niche market. But I don't see it going beyond that.

Whoa!!! Can you post that on Third Hour?

Yes. We did know it. You understood that with @Anddenex's post. We know "that one thing". But there will always be more things to learn, more things to know. Sometimes we get a math problem wrong, not because what we know is wrong. We get it wrong because of what we didn't know or didn't consider. My daughter was given a math problem with manipulatives. Consider that we had a whole bunch of pennies. We counted and we did the problem just as instructed. We had the right answer according to what we understood. But we made one mistake. The final question was asking for $ not cents. So we were off by a factor of 100. That's pretty far to be off by. We were REALLY wrong. But the fact was that all the fundamental steps we had were things we knew CORRECTLY. It was all correct knowledge. But we just didn't have ALL knowledge. Not necessarily. I think that as human beings, we lean on our physical senses enough that the Lord will use our physical senses as ONE method of leading us to knowledge. We are so used to using our physical senses, it hardly makes sense to ignore them completely if the Lord wants to teach us something. But the point I'm making is a fine one. And I hope I can word this properly. The actual "knowledge" of anything is through the Spirit. If the Glory of God is intelligence, then that glory (which in gospel lingo is "intelligence") is what helps us learn anything. But we're not just talking about mortal brain-power. It is the purity of our spirits and their connection to the Holy Ghost which lets us learn things. I also believe that we cannot learn anything spiritual or mundane without having some degree of humility. And we cannot learn anything without being able to tap into the light that comes from the Holy Ghost. I know, that also means that the worst, most vile soul on earth also has access to a portion of that light. Yes. It does. A portion. This is also why I believe that all mankind can be redeemed to some degree of glory through Jesus Christ except the Sons of Perdition. But those who are completely humble and open themselves to the full Gift of the Holy Ghost will learn the important things of eternity much more easily. And eventually as time is but a memory of eternity, those who rejected the light will have taken away even that which they have. Part of the difficulty of this conversation is that we have very different understandings of what knowledge actually is and how we obtain it. You seem to be looking at knowledge from a very scholastic pedagogical source. That simply isn't how we learn things. Why is it that you can go to a convention of doctors and nurses -- people who should be the most educated people on the planet regarding healthy and unhealthy behavior -- and we see huge smoking areas filled to capacity outside of the convention? Do they "know" it will kill them?

Just the other day I saw a video on Youtube about using wind power to travel faster than the wind. A land sailboat that goes faster than the wind. Anyone who understands physics would KNOW that this is impossible. It violates the fist and second laws of thermodynamics. Yet with some scientific measurements by a third party, they discovered it actually did what it claimed. That's impossible. Yet it happened. The one thing I noticed that they did not discuss was the slope of the terrain. It was assumed to be flat - a very flat floodplain. But they never actually mentioned it. I never saw them measure it. So, we know. But knew facts may make us doubt what we know. Until we are endowed with further light that allows us to reconcile an apparent discrepancy.

HUGE miscommunication. Let me clarify. When I said: "These" was not referring to faith vs. knowledge. That is a different discussion you're having with Vort. And I'll weigh in on that at a later point. But you kind of wandered a bit into a side thought. It was that side thought that I was addressing. I was referring to: Physically seeing Spiritual witness You thought that just because he physically saw God, that was somehow superior to a spiritual witness. If you read back over my last post with that perspective, I think you'll get my point better. Seeing "a finger" did not give him any special knowledge. I see fingers all day long. Mostly my own. But what was it that told him that it was "the finger of the Lord"? It was the witness of the Spirit. What else could it have been? If he truly did not know that the Lord had a finger, then I'd think that the first inclination would have been to doubt whether he was actually speaking with the Lord and was possibly being deceived. Consider this: Spiritual witness is more powerful than simply seeing something. No, seeing is NOT believing, much less "knowing". I submit that the spiritual witness was what allowed the BoJ to KNOW that the finger he SAW was the Lord's finger. Simply seeing it was not what gave him that knowledge. "Seeing" was simply a natural consequence (a good one). But it was the spiritual witness that told him the important part -- that it was not just "someone's" finger -- it was the finger of the Lord. Spiritual witness (just as physical sight) is obscure in dim light. But when the light is much more powerful, the spiritual witness is that much more clear. The parallels are unmistakable. Based on this, I'm going to guess that your spiritual witnesses up to this point in life, have been in "dim light". So, naturally, you think that spiritual witness is not as "clear and obvious" as physically seeing something. Understandable. But what if your spiritual light was just as clear as the sun at noonday? What would you "see" then? It is easy to believe in our mortal world that our flesh is what is dependable. But remember that we are spiritual beings at our core. Faith is what links us to that world and lets us see, hear, and touch the things of the other world. Many times I've sought answers from the Lord. And several times I receive words in my head as clearly as someone speaking to me. But I don't understand the meaning. So, I have to ask for clarification on the meaning of the words. Then I receive a spiritual witness of the interpretation thereof. It is only then that I understand and KNOW. There is no "seeing" the words that allow me to understand and KNOW the truth of the words. And even "hearing" doesn't let me understand and know the truth of what is spoken. It is only through the Power of the Holy Ghost that I understand the words, know the truth of the words, and come to believe in the importance of the words. I need to emphasize something about BoJ's vision. The powerful message is that his FAITH was SO STRONG that the faith pushed him through the veil. Understand that mortal words here betray us. The passage in Ether struggles to describe it properly. Just see how the words kind of go back and forth. Others might see this as a proof of fraud. No, it is proof that this experience was just that difficult to describe with the mortal tongue. Let me walk you through it step-by-step: The veil was taken off... then... he saw the finger. Was faith really just the precursor to knowledge at this point? No. It was something much more powerful than that. It was a power that PUSHED him through the veil without being drawn in by the Lord (as others had, and have). Try to understand what kind of power faith really is. In the next passage, you'll be tempted to focus on the first phrase. But I'd ask you to look at the second. He was seeing a vision of things to come mix with the present. It was not seeing as we see things as they are right in front of us. It was going into a spiritual realm where knowledge of past, present, and future are all one eternal round. That was the grand nature of this revelation. It was not that he "saw something". It was that his faith was so powerful that he recieved spiritual knowledge (defining spiritual knowledge could be another discussion). If seeing alone was truth, then he saw something false. Simply seeing would have told him that the Lord had flesh and blood at that moment. That was incorrect. Only through additional information did he understand that what he saw was an overlay of a future condition onto the present reality. There is no way that sight would have told him that. It was through instruction that he was focused to understand something different. Then it was through the Spirit that he truly understood what he saw. It is all intewoven. Why did the Lord (after he had "knowledge") ask if he would believe? Then the answer is that he "knows" God is a God of truth. You can't completely separate the two. And they are not simply stages. Visual knowledge is not as powerful as you think. That is why it is so easy to con people. Humans tend to see what they want to see. I need to emphasize that seeing a vision (as Joseph, Moses, Enoch, and BoJ did) is not what you think it is. Yes, there is sight. We do see. But the power behind that vision is faith. Without that, we would see something and have no knowledge whether that vision was of God or of the devil or of man. It is the Power of the Holy Ghost that lets us "know" anything.

One idea to help you along in this noble pursuit.... Remember that "cleave" is its own antonym.

You probably don't realize it. But you're implying that these are mutually exclusive. What the BoJ experienced was not merely a physical sense of God's appearance. It was a spirit-to-spirit communication of profound and eternal truth. It was "pure knowledge" that has little to do with sight. Think about it. He saw a finger. He KNEW it was the finger of the Lord. How? How does seeing "a finger" give you pure knowledge that it is the Lord's Finger? There HAD to be additional facets to the experience beyond sight alone. Think about it. By the definitions you're using, how can we ever have knowledge that Jesus is our Savior? That's not something that you can "see" with your eyes. it is an understanding and an acceptance of a truth that can ONLY be communicated by the Spirit.

When I was a child, my father made it a point to tell us that we need to care for our elderly (referring to my grandparents) so that when we're elderly, our children will care for us. At the same time, we had very different feelings about my maternal grandparents vs my paternal grandparents. We favored the latter over the former. And this favoritism was from top to bottom--my father, my mother, all my siblings, down to me. My father would speak of taking care of the elderly in one breath. Then he would complain about them in the next breath. This wasn't exactly a good example of "honoring" in my mind. So, I really have nothing on which to base any definition of "honoring" one's parents.

Apparently so. A while later I got a call from a collection agency. But I didn't recognize the name they were using. I never knew his last name and he used an abbreviated form of his less common full name. So, I had no idea who she was talking about. But another room mate knew who she was talking about and enlightened me. "Wait, so his full name was...? His last name was...? What kind of family name is...? Since when did he live in this apartment?" "He didn't. He just used this phone number when he wanted to avoid people."

Yeah, sometimes it's like that. One campaign the GM completely railroaded us throughout the entire campaign. He gave us just enough down time for us to do whatever we wanted to trick us into thinking he gave us a lot of options. Then I figured out that during our "down time" we really had nothing to do and nowhere to go. I finally made it clear what was happening when our NPC Dwarven fighter was getting ready to do something crazy and I got everyone to grab him to keep him from giving away our position. The GM said that he evaded all of us. Me: But you didn't even roll anything. GM: Yeah, I didn't have to. He's pretty quick. Me: In just the last town you said that he was slowing us down from catching up to the bad guys because dwarves are not known for their speed. Now he's so fast that he gets an automatic evade on everyone in the party? GM: Yes. What's the problem? We ended the campaign that week. The GM was actually in trouble with debt collectors so he moved out of state a few days later and we never saw him again.

That sounds like a combination of two investigators on my mission. But maybe a bit different. Even in such a lowly state, neither woman ever thought of humbling herself. One of them died suddenly proudly smoking away when we told her that it was affecting her health. Apparently it was too late anyway. The other simply didn't want to see us anymore because she knew XYZ about God better than we ever would. Never knew what happened to her. Indeed. Are we really supposed to do this, though? I understand the need to forgive. And we truly should forgive all. But does "forgiveness" also mean we have a responsibility to take care of them? There's this thing called "toxic relationships." Some are so severe, that simply "having to deal with them" in any way has psychological & spiritual effects on the receiving end. Gratefully, I don't have to make that decision for my father. I don't know what I would do, honestly. But if push came to shove, I'd like to think I would at the very least help him to a state-run facility. I think I'd go crazy if I had to have him in my home for more than a couple of days.

I agree with general the sentiment. But I'd add something to this for the "bad parent" scenario. We bring honor to "the family name" (and by extension, the parents) by being honorable people who improve the world around us. In my many travels, I was in a particular ward for about two or three months. During that time, many members got to know me, and I them. Now, I don't mean to toot my own horn. I'm just saying this to make the point. One sister came to me and said (complimenting me for some traits I seem to have exhibited, and because she thought of me as 20 years younger than I was) "You must have had some wonderful parents to raise you to become the man you are." While I appreciated her effort at giving such a grand compliment, I couldn't help but choke on it considering the kind of people my parents were. I put on a polite face and simply thanked her. But after she left, I couldn't help but think, "I am bringing honor to the family name in spite of, not because of, my parents."

It sure sounds like it here: Sounds like it to me. I disagree. There is great strength in acknowledging the truth about what we know or don't know. -- Agreed. The fact that we can act in faith without pure knowledge can also provide strength. -- Agreed. Even though you have put conditions and explanations and all the qualifiers you have done, you're underlying premise is that none of us "know" there is a God. -- I disagree.

Let's see: Romney says Russia is trouble for us. The Democrats laugh at him. We're not in the cold war anymore. Hillary colludes with Russia to play around with the election against Trump. First they laugh at people saying Hillary colluded with Russia because we're not in the cold war anymore. Then they accuse Trump of colluding because he simply must have in order to win the election. Because, of course he did. Russia is the big baddie now. Trump says some condescending things about Putin and makes threats against Russia for some military actions that Russia took. Somehow this is considered colluding with Russia. Biden is President and Russia is emboldened to make threats against America. Russia is not a problem.

First of all, if the target is unconscious, it is considered an automatic coup-de-grace. So, it should not have happened that way. The "resistance" thing reminded me of an adventure of my own. There were bats flying overhead. As a psychic, I could detect that they were somehow evil/cursed bats. Several members of the party had the ability to create a sonic boom (through magic, items, psionics, etc.) So, someone blasted them, causing disorientation among the bats. This continued a few times until the GM said that it no longer worked. He did this because he wanted to get the campaign going again. And it was important that we follow the path of the bats. So we got there and found a giant man-bat creature. We did all sorts of attacks but simply could not get through the guy's defenses. The GM got mad that we hadn't used sonic booms. We reminded him that he declared that our sonic booms stopped functioning. So we couldn't use them. The idea was that we weren't supposed to play around with a bunch of harmless bats. But when we got to the big boss, we'd use the boom. Well, that didn't happen.

I'm getting more concerned about Russia right now.

I don't know how this would apply to anyone else, but we have an interesting quirk in our family. My oldest brother is gay. But he tries to remain celibate even though he has left the Church. He also happens to be pretty dang wealthy. So, it was always understood that he'd be the one to take care of our parents in their old age. By doing so, he was the only one who neither left nor cleft (see what I did there??). However, life goes where it goes; and does what it does. My sister happened to marry into money. She was always the one who was great with money to begin with -- a financial genius (even though she could barely do more than basic math). Then she found a guy who was a fabulously wealthy heir. Don't get me wrong. He's a great guy. And he's extremely handsome (blast him). But given her financial situation, she's the one taking care of our father in his old age. Mom died last year (I mentioned that in other threads). Dad has early stages of Alzheimers. And she's able to take care of him.

I'll take a stab at this. I realize this is pretty weak and not fully fleshed out. But this is off the top of my head without a lot of pondering and research. So, take it as you will. One thing that many people notice about the covenant line from Abraham was that there was the first born, and there was another who was the heir. The Biblical examples, however, point to some loss of birthright due to unrighteousness for that transfer to take place. Such was not the case with Joseph Smith. Why? First off, Alvin died fairly early on in the process of the restoration. So, he couldn't do it. Why not Hyrum? I think that maybe he could have. But Joseph needed protectors when he was younger. And Hyrum was in a perfect position to do so. Additionally, each of Joseph's counselors (with the sole exception of Hyrum) eventually betrayed him (and the Lord). Hyrum was the only one who remained constant. As young as Joseph was, would it have made much sense to have an even younger brother be his counselor? No, usually, we have counselors who have enough wisdom to... you know... give counsel to the presiding officer. So Hyrum, as an older brother, provided a very important role to the one who would be the prophet of this dispensation. And the birthright went to Joseph out of necessity rather than righteousness. What does this have to do with "Jr."? Well, I always found it odd that a father would name his THIRD son after himself, rather than his firstborn son. Does that seem strange to anyone else? ---- To summarize, I believe there was a pattern repeated throughout these covenant lines. There was a birthright that was lost (for unrighteousness in ancient times -- incl. Lehi's sons). And there was the final disposition of the birthright to a younger son. For some reason this pattern keeps repeating. I don't fully know why this pattern is so prominent. But it seems that when a pattern repeats so much when the issue of birthright is brought up, there must be some significance to it.

@Fether, I absolutely believe that many people get up to the pulpit and say they know when they don't really. They just have a lot of faith. I absolutely believe that many people get up to the pulpit and say that they know -- and they really do For you to judge them on their testimonies is pretty presumptuous. Give people the benefit of the doubt. It would be more profitable for both you and them if you would ask for a private conversation with any of them or all of them (one at a time) and ask how they got to the point where they "know" because you'd like to get to that point too. Whether they are really there or not should not be your goal. You're not their judge. But whatever they say, prayerfully consider how you might emulate their paths and see if it helps you to "know."

I guess I missed the fact that Elder Soares was from Brazil. I was listening to the recent video on "How I Hear Him." This latest one features Elder Soares. It was interesting that it was not in English. And at first I thought he was speaking Spanish because that was what I was expecting. And the languages are so similar, that one who speaks both can easily mistake one for the other. Then I thought, "Gee, he really has a funny accent." Then I realized that he wouldn't have an accent. It's his native language. That was when I realized he was speaking Portuguese (Brazilao). Go figure.