There is much to learn from the Christmas story. In this article I explore the identities of the shepherds and the Wise Men – who they were, where they were form, what made them different and special, why they were chosen, what their experiences were, and what we can learn from them. These two groups are powerful examples of the different ways people gain testimonies of Christ and what it means to be a witness of Christ in the world. There stories and their examples have a great deal to teach us about what it means to be Christians in the world today.
Category: History
Total War: Exposing The Vicious Nature of the State/Government
These past few weeks I’ve been playing the most anarchist game ever made, one that reveals the absolute truth of exactly how the State/government functions, why it functions that way, the true motives of those in power, and the impact this has on the societies over which it rules. Honestly, it is quite shocking just how revealing it is of the tyranny and violence at the heart of modern politics and statism. In this article, I not only explain what the game is but how it completely exposes how the state functions, how the state corrupts society, how the state is founded upon violence and theft, and why we should utterly reject it.
Not Amnesty But Prison For The COVID Tyrants
The last few years have been utterly devastating for the entire world. In response to the appearance of Covid-19, the governments of the world asserted insane, unconstitutional, illegal, and immoral powers to seize control of every aspect of society, imprison entire populations of provinces, states, and nations in their homes as if they were criminals under house arrest, to irrationally determine who could work, who couldn’t, and who had to starve, prevent people from going to church, seeing their loved ones, or being with their families, and cause such mass hysteria and fear that society turned on itself in fits of outrage, hate, and self-destruction. The end results of all this were utterly predictable and were reported on endlessly by many people, including those of us here. Now the monsters, fools, and tyrants that wreaked all this havoc simply want you to forgive and forget what they have done. We cannot let that happen!
Halloween, Human Sacrifice, and The Revolution of Jesus Christ
Human sacrifice has been at the heart of human worship for as far back as humanity history stretches – and beyond. And it hasn’t went away. Many of our modern stories – of monsters and heroes – centers around human sacrifice and the sacrificing of humans. Whether you’re talking about Halloween or American Sniper, you’re still talking about the sacrifice of human lives to accomplish some higher goal and in service to some higher power. In this article, I look at human sacrifice in modern human storytelling, human sacrifice in human history, and at how the work of Jesus Christ has been to replace the sacrifice of men with the sacrifice of Himself and, in doing so, to totally transform human society at every level. Only through Christ can we hope to bring an end to the brutality of human sacrifice.
Correcting The Liahona on the U.S. Constitution
The Liahona, the official magazine of the Church of Jesus Christ of Latter-day Saints published an article on the United States Constitution in its September 2022 issue. And boy is it terrible, for numerous reasons. For example, despite having degrees in the subject the author doesn’t even have a basic understanding of human rights or the history of the Constitution and actively tries to justify government tyranny.
This article is a step by step dismantling of the Liahona article and its problems, not only in order to provide Latter-day Saints with a necessary correction for something published in a church magazine, but because such a work will serve as a solid foundation for discarding much of the same kind of dreck (from both academic and amateur sources) that the reader will encounter endlessly elsewhere whenever discussing the Constitution.
What Mormon Teaches Us About War And Loving Our Enemies
Whenever I point out that Captain Moroni’s example doesn’t justify modern Saints going to war because he lived the Law of Moses and we live the Law of Christ and that modern revelation commands us to renounce war completely the response is inevitable. I always get some version of, “What about Mormon and his son, Moroni? They were baptized Christians who fought in wars. If they can do it, why can’t we?” By looking at what the scriptures, I answer this question and show why Mormon and Moroni do not justify us joining modern day wars.
How Vladimir Putin’s Invasion of Ukraine Could Destroy Him
In 1979, the Soviet Union invaded Afghanistan. The outcome seemed inevitable. The Soviet Union was one of the most powerful nations on the planet with a military rivalled only by the United States. Yet, a decade later the Soviet Union was forced to retreat, its army broken and demoralized, defeated by a band of loosely confederated hill tribes. The cost of this humiliation was unbearable, and it shattered the foundation of the Soviet Union’s power. The Soviet Union dissolved as its subject people, seeing its army beaten and sent home with its tail between its legs by Afghani fights, decided now was the time to rebel and regain their independence. The Soviet Union collapsed forever.
These are all warnings that Putin did not heed when he invaded Ukraine. Just as Afghanistan became the graveyard of the Soviet Union, so could Ukraine become the graveyard of Vladimir Putin’s authoritarian regime. In an effort to prove Russia’s might, Putin may have just committed political suicide and doomed his entire power structure.
Absolute Proof That Socialism is Slavery
George Fitzhugh was one of the most influential defenders of slavery in the United States before the Civil War. A severe critic of human liberty and a free society, Fitzhugh argued that wage labor was worse than slavery and that a capitalist society did nothing but lead to the suffering and death for the millions of laborers of lived in it. In his book, “Sociology for the South,” Fitzhugh addresses the similarities between slavery and Socialism/Communism. He explains all the ways that slavery fulfills the promises and goals of Socialism, how the Socialist rejection of a free society inevitably leads to slavery, and how Socialism is the form of slavery that free societies invent to solve the ills of capitalism while still pretending to be free. As shown herein, Fitzhugh clearly explains that Socialism isn’t merely like slavery. Socialism *is* slavery and slavery *is* Socialism in very form and deed, in every way but in the usage of the word itself.
Insights Into A Free Society From America’s First Great Novelist
In addition to be a novelist who managed to give form to the American identity in his tales, James Fenimore Cooper also had a keen insight into America’s social and political culture. His writings on politics, culture, society, and government also magnificently captured the early American ideals of liberty, humanity, and freedom, preserving the wisdom and insight into these concepts that so many of us so desperately need today, but have lost. Drawing from his work, “The American Democrat,” I explore Cooper’s insights into subjects such as social equality, liberty, the basis of good government, the limits of political power, and more. If more people understood these truths then the world would be a freer, safer, more prosperous place for all.
Is The Book of Mormon Racist?
The claim that the Book of Mormon is racist is a common refrain among our critics, some of their most potent ammunition to destroy the interest of investigators and sow doubts in the faithful. But they’re wrong.
The Book of Mormon isn’t racist. And in this article I prove it by taking a detailed look at the symbolic and literal interpretations of the Lamanite curse and “skin of blackness” to demonstrate that it not only isn’t racist, it has nothing to do with race at all. The Book of Mormon, when understood in its proper context as an ancient document reflecting the language and ideas of people whose culture and understanding of the world was fundamentally different than ours, is very clearly not racist. When someone sees it as racist they are only demonstrating their ignorance of the document itself and projecting our own modern problems onto it.