Needed a Nap

I found this paragraph in a talk given by President Monson at the General Relief Society Meeting in October. (Text, Audio, Video)
"I learned recently of loving service given to a mother when her children were very young. Frequently she would be up in the middle of the night tending to the needs of her little ones, as mothers do. Often her friend and neighbor across the street would come over the next day and say, 'I saw your lights on in the middle of the night and know you were up with the children. I’m going to take them to my house for a couple of hours while you take a nap.' Said this grateful mother: 'I was so thankful for her welcome offer, it wasn’t until this had happened many times that I realized if she had seen my lights on in the middle of the night, she was up with one of her children as well and needed a nap just as much as I did. She taught me a great lesson, and I’ve since tried to be as observant as she was in looking for opportunities to serve others.'”

Media

Ezra Taft Benson May 1986
"Don’t see R-rated movies or vulgar videos or participate in any entertainment that is immoral, suggestive, or pornographic. Don’t listen to music that is degrading."

For the Strength of Youth
"Do not attend, view, or participate in entertainment that is vulgar, immoral, violent, or pornographic in any way. Do not participate in entertainment that in any way presents immorality or violent behavior as acceptable."

“If there is anything virtuous, lovely, or of good report or praiseworthy, we seek after these things” (Articles of Faith 1:13).

Lies and Half Truths About the Church

If the Church is wrong then people should be able to create a logical argument against it without having to lie.

Below I will list of critics that I have found to be disreputable. Below that I will detail some of the things I have heard about the Church that are not true. Where possible I will note the person that said it, so that as people come across works about the Church they can identify authors to avoid.

Disreputable Critics

• Shiela Garrigus
• Eric Grieschaben

---

Details

Lie
Mormons talk to dead people in their temples. If you are a member in good standing and you want to talk to your dead grandmother you can go to the temple and do a ritual and talk to her.

Source
Eric Grieschaben

Truth
There is not temple ritual to talk to dead people.

---

Lie
Mormons are not Christian. They believe in a different Jesus.

Source
Eric Grieschaben

Truth
How different is Jesus between the various protestant denominations, yet they all consider each other as Christians. An example of this is whether God is one entity taking on different forms or whether the Father, Son, and Holy Ghost are individuals. This is a huge difference about who Jesus is.

To say that Mormons do not believe in the same Jesus as Christians in order to classify them as being part of the occult is ridiculous.

One of the arguments used to bolster this argument our Jesus not being Jesus is to throw out that Mormons believe that Jesus and Satan are brothers. Scandalous!

The bible states that Lucifer was with God and he got greedy and tried to take over and was cast out and became Satan (Isaiah 14, Rev 12:7-9). The bible also states that before the Earth was created that Jesus was with God (John 1:1-4). Many families have family members that go on to greatness, while some of those same families also have family members that are trouble.

I realize that based on the biblical record that we have today this could be perceived as speculation, but is it a doctrine that really throws Mormons into the category of the occult?

---

Lie
Women can not be saved without men. This goes in the category of "the Mormons are oppressive to women."

Source
Shiela Garrigus

Truth
Being "saved" to protestants means going to Heaven or not going to Hell. This would be equivalent to getting to the Celestial Kingdom to Latter-day Saints. You don't have to be married to get to the Celestial Kingdom. To obtain all the blessings of the Celestial Kingdom one must be married. This applies to men and women both.

---

Lie
"Mormons refuse to take off these garments completely even while taking a bath..."

Source
I didn't catch the source, but it was some guy being interviewed in a cafe and was pontificating rubbish about Latter-day Saints.

Truth
He mentioned something about Latter-day Saints would take a bath and keep their hand outside the tub covered with their garments.  This is a flat out lie and totally inflamatory.

2 Nephi 4:13-15

2 Nephi 4:13-15
Summary
Laman and Lemuel are upset with Nephi because of their father's words to them about their disobedience. Nephi is constrained from giving them any more instruction, but continues his record. This record can then be used by future generations to find their way back.

It struck me that this can apply to us. When we get stuck in our own traditions and our own wants we harden ourselves and distance ourselves to where the spirit stops instructing us. In order to get further instruction we need to go to the scriptures get get those instructions and to get the spirit to begin instructing us again.

Mighty Prayer

I was listening to the December 2006 Ensign article What I Have Learned about Mighty Prayer by Mary Jane Woodger on the way to work this morning. A quote from President Hinckley in it made me think. “The trouble with most of our prayers is that we give them as if we were picking up the telephone and ordering groceries—we place our order and hang up."(Teachings of Gordon B. Hinckley (1997), 469)

I think most of us have had the concern at one time or another about repetitious prayers or prayers that seem to barely reach to the ceiling let alone to Heavenly Father. One piece that I think I miss frequently is meditating.

The world has perhaps made the concept of meditation seem hokey, but I think if done properly and with the right spirit it is a critical part of prayer. I have heard several talks over the last couple of years on meditating. I think meditating could be defined as the part of prayer when we listen. I think the word meditate indicates something a bit more focused than listening, but I think listening is something we all understand and it is a good place to start.

In my opinion, meditation is not the chanting that we sometimes see on TV, but a simple, focused listening and pondering or focused observing.

This article was a nice reminder that prayer is a communication channel and is a two way channel. We must listen and not just rattle off our requests and leave.

Pro Sports and the Sabbath

We often talk about people that "have" to work on Sunday. Either because they are short on money and they have no choice but to take a job on Sunday or because they are in a profession that is critical to have available to people on Sunday (doctors, firefighters, police).

I don't believe that professional sports fall into either of these categories, but I wanted to get some other opinions on this. If I was someone starting out my career life is Professional sports a justifiable "work on Sunday" career?

The second piece of this that I am interested in is watching pro sports on Sunday. A) Is it a valid use of our Sabbath time to watch sports? B) Are we causing others to work on Sunday (the players) by us watching? We would not go out to eat on Sunday and cause someone else to have to work on the Sabbath, but does watching sports commercialize the Sabbath as well?


The point of this post is not to be judgmental, but to expand each other's knowledge of the Sabbath.

Satan Petitioning to have Job Tortured

In Sunday school this week we talked about Satan's telling God that Job was only faithful because he was so blessed. It made me think about why was Satan given an audience with God? Why was God persuaded by him?

I didn't want to side track the lesson, but I thought it might be a nice thing to share thoughts on with each other.

Gospel Preached to the Dead

1 Peter 3:18-20, 1 Peter 4:6

Forgiveness in the World to Come

I read Matt 12:32 today
32 And whosoever speaketh a word against the Son of man, it shall be forgiven him: but whosoever speaketh against the Holy Ghost, it shall not be ^aforgiven him, neither in this world, neither in the world to come.
I had always read this scripture from the perspective of the unpardonable sin, which is obviously what it is all about. When I read it today I noticed the phrase "neither in the world to come." People often talk about people dying and going directly to Heaven or Hell, which goes against the idea of Christ returning and judging his people. This scripture's implication seems to support the doctrine of being able to repent to some extent after death.

This is not to imply that one should wait until the "world to come" to repent, but it made me think that this might be a biblical reference to doing work for the dead.

God is a Spirit

John 4: 24

24 ^aGod is a ^bSpirit: and they that worship him must worship him in spirit and in ^ctruth.

Many people use this to prove that God does not have a body, but the same could be said for man. Man is a spirit. Man is also flesh and bone, but our spirit is who we are.

Does anyone have any other authoritative resources on this?

What is David's Fate?

One question I have had is can David repent? Has his committed the unpardonable sin by committing murder? Our Sunday school teach said that he may never attain anything above the Telestial. If he had not received any level of forgiveness he would have received no glory and yet to have fallen so far to not be able to reach beyond the Telestial. Also the statements in 2 Sam 11-12 about his wives being given to another. Is that in this life or in the resurrection? Does anyone know the history of David at all? Did he lose his wives in this life? The scriptures reference that the Lord would do this thing before the sun. That kind of spoke of Celestial things to me, but I have nothing authoritative yet.

Anyone else have anything autoritative?

Bible and Book of Mormon

Bible
Several are offended at the suggestion that there would be any scripture in addition to the Bible. Several also are stunned at the thought that God might have had any other plan than to keep the Bible pristine through the centuries.

Book of Mormon
Prophets have asked us to read the Book of Mormon every day.

Latter-day saints love the Bible and it has been an act of God that it has been preserved to us in the condition it is in.

I don't know what question to put here to spawn discussion, but this is such an important issue that I feel it is worthy of discussion. Maybe part of the problem is that I can not articulate the issue. Perhaps the discussion should start with someone helping me define the issue.

If Your Eye Offends You Pluck It Out

The Lord talked about this and it is recorded in the gospels. Over the years I have heard these passages discusses as referring to excommunication, but I was just listening to a BYU devotional given on June 6, 2006 by Joseph Perry. The talk was called "On Being a Christian Perfectly".

He proposed that one application of this doctrine might be to not pluck out our eyes if we can't keep from watching bad things, but to pluck out the cable, internet, or TV if they are causing us to stumble.

Evil Spirit From the Lord

1 Samuel 16 talks about Saul being afflicted with an evil spirit from the Lord. There are several other verses that use that same wording. I saw that the Joseph Smith Translation says that it is an evil spirit not of the Lord. I notice that other bible translations from other church seem to keep that theme that the evil spirit is of the Lord.

I was wondering if anyone had any information about the translation of these verses and the doctrine of other churches that would explain, from their perspective, an evil spirit from the Lord.

What should we be entering into our journals?

We are told that writing in our journals in an acceptable Sabbath activity. That being the case should our journals perhaps be of a spiritual nature?

What does "other side of the flood" mean?

In Joshua 24 the phrase "other side of the flood" is used. Does this refer to a time before the flood, a place where people lived before the flood, or is it just a manner of speaking that has nothing to do with the great flood?

What is a Prophetess?

We see in a few places in the bible references to prophetesses. For example, Judges 4:4 and Exodus 15:20.

What is the significance of bringing Joseph's bones out of Egypt?

Was it just to obey Joseph? What is so significant about doing it that Joseph would command that? Our bodies are temples of God, but is there any importance to what happens to them after we die? Does it matter where one is buried?

Joshua 24:
32 And the abones? of Joseph, which the children of Israel brought up out of Egypt, buried they in Shechem, in a parcel of ground which Jacob bought of the sons of Hamor the father of Shechem for an hundred pieces of silver: and it became the inheritance of the children of Joseph.
Gen. 50: 25
25 And Joseph took an aoath of the children of Israel, saying, God will surely visit you, and ye shall carry up my bbones from hence.

Ex. 13: 19
19And Moses took the bones of Joseph with him: for he had straitly sworn the children of Israel, saying, God will surely visit you; and ye shall carry up my abones away hence with you.

What happened to Moses?

What resources do we have on what happened to Moses after he left the children of Israel?

Deut 34
6 And he aburied• him in a valley in the land of Moab, over against Beth-peor: but no man knoweth bof• his csepulchre unto this day.

7 ¶ And Moses was an ahundred• and twenty years old when he died: his eye was not dim, nor his natural force abated.

It says that he died, but then it says that his eye was not dimmed and his natural force was not abated.

Here's a small list I started. Anybody got any other sources?
Jst Deut 34:6
For the Lord took him unto his fathers, in a valley in the land of Moab, over against Beth-peor; therefore no man knoweth of his sepulcher unto this day.

Alma 45:19
Behold, this we know, that he was a righteous man; and the saying went abroad in the church that he was taken up by the Spirit, or buried by the hand of the Lord, even as Moses. But behold, the scriptures saith the Lord took Moses unto himself; and we suppose that he has also received Alma in the spirit, unto himself; therefore, for this cause we know nothing concerning his death and burial.

Relatives as ministering Angels

Here is a paragraph from the talk President Faust gave in the priesthood session of this past general conference:

I would like to say a word about the ministering of angels. In ancient and modern times angels have appeared and given instruction, warnings, and direction, which benefited the people they visited. We do not consciously realize the extent to which ministering angels affect our lives. President Joseph F. Smith said, "In like manner our fathers and mothers, brothers, sisters and friends who have passed away from this earth, having been faithful, and worthy to enjoy these rights and privileges, may have a mission given them to visit their relatives and friends upon the earth again, bringing from the divine Presence messages of love, of warning, or reproof and instruction, to those whom they had learned to love in the flesh."⁶ Many of us feel that we have had this experience. Their ministry has been and is an important part of the gospel. Angels ministered to Joseph Smith as he reestablished the gospel in its fulness.