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So, during WWII, your grandpa was unsure how many children he fathered?

Revelation 10 link, for convenience. That is an interesting connection. I suspect that this may have been a common metaphor in the culture(s) in question. And it seems used in two very different ways here - John is not spending time savoring evil, and then experiencing the painful consequences that always come from evil.... He is obeying the Lord, and (as far as I can determine) taking into himself the word of God (the things he must prophesy per verse 11). You wouldn't think that would be bitter, especially for the translated John, but I suppose the amount of rejection and wickedness he would have to experience and witness would be bitter, while testifying of the Lord would be sweet... D&C 77 Jeremiah 15:16 may also interest you - another instance of "eating" the Lord's words, though no bitterness here. It might be interesting to find all the instances wherein a prophet "eats" the word of God in some form. PS: That D&C 77 bit makes me wonder just how involved the translated John is in the current efforts to gather Israel, and how openly (to our current prophet).

Acts 26:5, for others who wonder... Yes, fits perfectly with the idea of "strict", thank you. Of course, that it describes the Pharisees is also a reminder to not get so focused on the rules for their own sake that you forget the rule-giver.

For a while, I've had this idea that studying individual words used frequently in scripture or gospel teaching might prove fruitful in some way. I tend to be blind to what other people think is obvious. I also tend to find motivation and new application in greater understanding, so this idea makes sense for me. Anyway, I recently heard an idea about the "strait and narrow path" that struck me. It came shortly after a sort of mini-revelation on the same topic. (More on those at the end.) Since the stuffed animals don't respond when I talk to them, I figured I'd try here... The Dictionary and Culture Strait: "(of a place) of limited spatial capacity; narrow or cramped." and "close, strict, or rigorous." I think both of these definitions give good insight into why the gate or path is called strait, even though we're not technically talking about a place. According to the etymology, it comes from words meaning "tight, narrow" and before that, "drawn tight" - and from the same root as "strict" (suiting for disciplined disciples to follow a strict course). Narrow: Most of the definitions are nothing surprising, but some are worth mention, especially the verb! "precise or strict in meaning" "become or make less wide" and "become or make more limited or restricted in extent or scope." - It seems to me this is an excellent way to think of the path back to our heavenly Father - as we go, we discard the natural man, becoming ever more focused and disciplined. Our path does indeed narrow. It should be no surprise to anyone that Americans might recoil a bit at the ideas of strait and narrow being good. Strait jacket comes to mind... We come from a country with lots of physical space, and a land of liberty, where individual liberty was (I'm not sure it still is) foundational. We love our cars and our open roads. The bigger the better, super-sized and all that. We can relate to those folks in scripture who say "this place is too narrow / strait for me, give me more room" (Joshua 17:14-16, 2 Kings 6:1, Isaiah 49:20). Scriptures about Strait and Narrow The strait gate is baptism (2 Nephi 31:17) and this puts you on the strait and narrow path, which leads to eternal life; receiving the Holy Ghost is part of this (verse 18). (see also Jacob 6:11) The strait gate must be entered by proper authority and ordinance (see D&C 22) The strait and narrow path "came along by the rod of iron" to the tree, aka the Savior, aka the love of God... (1 Nephi 8:20) This vision perhaps provides the best visual of how the strait and narrow path is in extreme difference to "broad is the way" - like 1 degree of right and 359 degrees of wrong. Feel free to reverse them (narrow gate, strait path). (2 Nephi 33:9) While baptism may seem simple, apparently, it requires effort to enter the strait gate (Luke 13:24), and not all will make that effort. And an interesting variation (and perhaps another gate in addition to baptism - sealing): Another instructive derivation: I like that this one ties in "straight", that Christ is the gate, the keeper of the gate, and the way, the definer of the path, the leader along the path ... ("Way" is one of those words I think worthy of exploration, but it deserves its own post, if this sort of thing leads to discussion.) Recent Realizations So, of late I've been involved in a lot of science-y discussions about fountain pens. (What, you thought I was going to leave them out? ) Fountain pens work by capillary action. A lot of this stuff is new to me because I never took physics classes. One of the things I learned is that the narrower the capillary, the higher the water can climb. Did you catch that? The gospel parallel? Think of it like rock climbing. A "chimney" let's you climb: If the walls were farther apart, you couldn't climb them (or not that way, at least). As I was reading and looking at someone's capillary action experiments involving two plates of glass and then some capillary tubes, it hit me that this could be likened to our strait and narrow path. The narrowness of that path allows us to "climb higher". The more you think about this, the more logical it seems - focused effort, discipline, etc. Narrowness now seems good and enabling, downright helpful, not "restrictive" or "limiting". The second insight came from this Jordan Peterson interview with some way-too-smart dude. (Around 1:26:00) Peterson points out that at any given point, there's a near-infinite number of ways that things could go wrong, but very few ways that things can get better - and that's the strait and narrow path - the path to things getting better. And the interesting thing is, the better your life, the narrower the path to better, whereas the worse your life, the more ways it could get better - back to "narrow" as a verb. So, another way to look at the strait gate and narrow path - they are the way for things to get better, and that way is always narrower than the one that leads to "worse". For those who prefer to learn by music, here's some Johnny Cash (with mention of the strait and narrow)...

Welcome to ThirdHour, @Dyan! (Sorry, can't tell you more than NT has said.)

Do you recall Elder Cook's GC talk? He's been trained.

Welcome, @Mageeha! Amen to what @laronius said, and, since it popped into my head just now and for no other apparent reason, I'll add: if you haven't gotten your patriarchal blessing yet, you might want to consider doing so - they can be an amazing guide for going forward. (Sometimes folks forget to tell adult converts about patriarchal blessings. If no one's told you about them, go chat with your bishop. )

I've always thought this text from the Bible Dictionary entry on Prayer sounded correct and helpful: Frankly, I'm glad they've removed the "template" for prayer that used to be taught (at least, it's gone from Preach My Gospel), and replaced it with something more in line with the above, and not transactional.

This is the right approach. Do as much as you can and let God magnify it - loaves & fishes - in the end, you'll have not only more than you started with, but more than enough.

Welcome, @Emmett Xavier Theodoran! You can contact missionaries for The Church of Jesus Christ of Latter-day Saints at the Come Unto Christ website, via the "Contact Us" menu. You can also find a local church to visit and meet members in person. On this site, members and others discuss a wide variety of topics. If you'd like to post a question here, you're more than welcome to and we'll do our best. But for missionaries, check out above link.

Sounds more like this. When it's kids, there's no minivan and they don't drive from house to house. (I live on a corner, easy for the kids to ring the bell and race around the corner, so when the neighborhood boys were all tween-ish, I got a lot of it - so did my counterpart on the corner three doors behind me. Of course, I'd long since started ignoring my doorbell - no one ever shows up unexpected, so the last laugh may have been mine...) Might be good to check in with your neighbors, @Emmanuel Goldstein.

I've encountered too many people in this circumstance who have not yet experienced the fulfilled promise and who keep trying despite this (for various reasons). I believe the word simply is wrong. I believe that there are cases of those who just don't understand (yet). They haven't figured out how to be sincere or how to recognize the answer or some other how. To their credit, they recognize that it's worth continuing the struggle. For some, it just isn't simple. They aren't intentionally being blind, but the usual lessons on how to see aren't working for them. In high school, I had a friend in most of my classes (she was very smart, a fellow honors student). In our trig and pre-calc class, she could not understand a significant percent of what the teacher was trying to teach. But if I re-explained it, she could understand my way of putting it. Fortunately, the teacher accepted this and didn't mind me turning around and repeating the lesson to my friend. I think this is the case with many who struggle with The Sunday School Promises - whoever is explaining things to them isn't speaking their language. They need to hear it in some other terms or experience some other insight, or something different from the norm. I trust that eventually, everyone can experience the promised results, but for some of us, for whatever reason, it's harder, and I no longer believe that it's because they are willfully doing something wrong. Maybe they're doing something wrong, but if so, it's in ignorance or confusion. In such cases, I try to encourage them not to give up, that the struggle is worth it, that even without all the promised experiences, life is better continuing to try than giving up. I also encourage trying to look at things from different angles, considering all the variables involved, asking what's missing, etc. etc. Anything to keep them trying and help them to find whatever it is they specifically need to come to Christ. But I don't tell them they're clearly not doing it right - just doesn't help.

I see nothing figurative about it. The language is plain and clear. As to why the rest is missing from the Bible - heaven knows - maybe the authors never felt it appropriate to write about it, maybe they didn't know how, or maybe scribes removed it. And we don't know exactly how much blood was involved. But I believe the exact words written in the D&C.

Yeah, sure, fine, this is how every other Christian dismisses this passage, but we have the Lord's words: ...while we have no account of people's reactions to his appearance - perhaps it was a moonless night, I don't know - I believe the Lord's account and short of miraculous removal of this blood, I expect he looked a bit of a mess if not downright scary. I do not know why people have such a problem believing that Christ simply let a bit of his power and authority and majesty show through when he declared that he was the person they sought. So unless they all tripped over their own feet while stepping back for personal reasons (which I don't believe), I'm quite happy to believe that the momentary assertion of his glory caused them to fall in a not dissimilar way to how one day every knee will bow.

I highly doubt that any prophet or apostle has considered the design, placement, or construction details of any temple to be "superficial". One source of my doubt ... I was going to quote from it, but there's too much, so just read the whole talk. If you don't come away with understanding, pray before reading it a second time. (Note that it's not this one talk per se that causes my doubt, it's the facts that the talk gives us about how all temples are designed and built - and there have been other talks that teach additional facts in the same vein. I believe there is absolutely nothing superficial about our temples and that prophets and apostles direct all of it, even if they're not the ones doing the physical inspections. Unfortunately, I don't remember enough details from other such talks to quickly find them, but there have been such talks or Ensign articles explaining the process and standards involved - as well as the miracles involved - in placing, designing, and constructing temples.)

Seriously? You never burned yourself as a child? Your mother never put aloe on it? You still go around touching hot burners or pans? Or maybe you're a parent and when your child is foolish and burns or hurts themselves you just say, "I told you so, now you get to suffer! Suffer, kid, suffer!" Or to bring it back to the topic, you run around willfully sinning away since you know repentance is always an option? Deceive on Saturday, repent on Sunday, ad infinitum?

My name is Legion: for we are many, Mark 5:9 (Luke 8:30).

I wonder if google did literal translation (hence the return to English seems better) and Chat GPT did some sort of localization into the various languages, which morphed the meaning enough that a literal translation back into English sounds all wrong.

Hmm. That person has three arms. Exactly what sort of doctor are you again...?

Thank you! Yet another way in which our neighborhood is amazing.

Well, now who's being silly?

Only because they haven't spent enough time watching I_am_puma videos. (I really, really want my very own mountain lion now.)

In the beginning: What, you didn't expect me to be serious after death, did you?

Glad to hear it! I hear the spot I'm in will receive less damage than most - some sort of rock under us. Of course, I haven't researched that myself, so I'm taking the neighbor's word for it... If needed, I'll see if @mirkwood has room in his Prius for an extra passenger - we can both come over... (Or if his Prius can't make it, I'll offer the three extra seats in my CR-V. )

Perhaps "Ask Captain Moroni whether they were angry at the kingmen." would be a good addition to someone's PBL... For an added bonus, use a fountain pen. (Above is Sailor Seiboku in a Kaweco Sport, fine nib on Staples ARC paper.) #postbucketlist #post-bucketlist #pbl (Apparently I'm not the first person to think of this, but I didn't know that until after I thought of it... It's not terribly popular right now, and existing uses of the hashtag appear mostly to be about posting your bucket list online or what to do after you've done everything on your bucket list.) (Also, it's possible I should have thought of this 4 days ago, but oh well, better late than never...) Now that I've made the challenge, I'll have to go think of what to put on my Post-Bucket List...