With December being the Christmas season I feel like we often get so caught up in celebrating the birth of Christ that we overlook the birth of the second greatest man in history – the Prophet Joseph Smith, Jr., born December 23, 1805. This year I wanted to take a day and celebrate his birth as well. Second only to the Savior, the Prophet Joseph is worthy of all the admiration, respect, and honor the Saints give him. This article was written to highlight some of the many ways that the Prophet Joseph was a paragon of Christianity, worthy of learning about, learning from, and following the example of in our lives.
Category: Religion
Bioshock, Ayn Rand, and the Horrors (?) of Objectivism
I am not an Objectivist (which should be obvious to anyone who has read any of my other articles.) But I have studied it in order to understand it. And I am constantly annoyed by the multitudes who have not and yet have very loud and very pompous opinions on Objectivism and Ayn Rand. In the video game subculture, there is no game widely held to be a definitive commentary on the “true” nature of Objectivism than the 2007 game “Bioshock.” There is only one problem with this belief: From start to finish, including all the lore, at no time is anyone in the game an Objectivist nor is there any time in which Objectivism guides the people in the story. While the game is magnificent in many ways it is an absolute failure as a critique of Objectivism. Here is the definitive explanation of why it fails so badly.
A Short History of the Horrific Israeli-Palestinian Conflict
There is nothing controversial or unclear about what is happening in the Israeli-Palestinian Conflict. The only thing that makes it seem confusing is the amount of pure lies and propaganda which are constantly spewed from the political and media talking heads who do everything they can to distort obvious facts into falsehoods which serve those in power. Here I provide a short review of the history of Israel and Palestine in order to dispel the dark mists of deceit which surround this issue and establish what has and is happening in the so-called Israeli-Palestinian Conflict.
Joseph F. Smith On The Satanic and Evil Nature of War
and will twist the scriptures in order to use their events to justify war no matter how many men, women, and children it murders – in shot, to justify reigning with blood and horror upon the Earth. Such Satanic ideas have long been the daily bread of the Natural Man. But when one studies the actual teachings of the scriptures (as opposed to simply assuming that because a “good” person did something then it must be right) and listens to the teachings of the Prophets of God we find that their teachings are the exact opposite. Repeatedly they teach that war is evil, that we do not need violence because God will protect us, and command us to renounce war in all its forms and justifications in order to live the Gospel of Jesus Christ. This LDS Classic from President Joseph F. Smith preaches these exact truths.
Here Is What The Scriptures Teach About Open Borders
The issue of immigration is an excellent example of how well meaning but fundamentally deceived Christians, including most Latter-day Saints, are lied to, fooled, and manipulated by the ideologies of the world into supporting immigration actions from governments which, at their most basic level, are cruel, anti-Christian, and outright evil. The purpose of this article is straight-forward- to address what exactly the scriptures command when it comes to immigration and the treatment of immigrants (of any sort) and to establish what exactly a Christian immigration policy would look like.
C.S. Lewis Explains The Problem With Masturbation
Many people, members of the church or not, do not really understand why masturbation is something that you should want to avoid. Even those who understand the evils of pornography still do not understand why a person should want to abstain from masturbation. Here a man much more eloquent and insightful than I powerfully explains why we should abstain from masturbation entirely.
The Truth About the Mormon Pioneers
If you pay attention Latter-day Saint history you can pinpoint the era in which American nationalism eclipsed the truth of our past as refugees and immigrants subjected to ethnic cleansing and oppression by the American state and American people. It is the point in which those first generations began to die and their grandchildren were being born, when the myth of the Mormon American pioneer developed as a way to legitimize the Saints in the eyes of and integrate the Saints into a society that had always hated and oppressed them. Here I attempt to recapture at least part of the truth of our past and address the dangers of this myth and false tradition of our fathers to us as a people.
That Time When Brigham Young Absolutely Demolished Young Earth Creationism
In writing my last two articles refuting some erroneous ideas and false doctrines about the creation and age of the Earth, I cam across a rather fantastic address by President Brigham Young from 1871. In it he teaches that there is no antagonism between science and religion. This is especially true for “Mormonism” as our faith embraces all truth from wherever it comes as part of it. Science and religion are both ways that God makes known the truths that He wants His children to know. His specific comments on the Creation and Age of the Earth do a great deal to dismiss the idea that the Earth is only 7,000 years old and that it was created in six literal days. This address will be enlightening to everyone who reads it.
The Mormon Pioneers Were Refugees and Illegal Immigrants
Pioneer Day is today. Celebrating the first time a company of Saints entered the Salt Lake Valley to permanently settle there, it is the closest thing we Latter-day Saints have to our own church holy day (holiday.) But there is a lot to this story that we don’t tell on Pioneer Day, a lot of our history and precious truth that we leave on the cutting room floor. For example: The pioneers weren’t really pioneers. They were really refugees illegally immigrating into Mexico in order to escape the decades of pogroms, ethnic cleansings, exterminations, and genocide they had suffered in the United States. This article is an attempt to tell this story of our spiritual and literal ancestors so that we can apply to real lessons of our history to the world we live in today and make it a better place, a more Christ-like place, a Zion-place.
Scriptural Proof The Earth Is More Than 7,000 Years Old
There are two different but connected errors that seriously plague modern Christianity. The first is the common error throughout segments of Christianity, including among Latter-day Saints, that the Earth was created in a single week. I addressed this error and corrected it last week. The second common error is that the world approximately 6,000 to 7,000 years old. That is what this article is about. The idea that the world is only 6,000 years old, an error that has damaged the faith of tens of thousands, even millions, of people, is based on a couple of fundamental misunderstandings of the scriptures. Both have also been refuted by modern revelation starting with the Prophet Joseph Smith. In order to correct this error and demonstrate what the scriptures truly teach on this subject I will combine a proper understanding of scriptural context with modern revelation to establish what it is about the Age of the Earth that the scriptures do teach so that we Latter-day Saints will not continue to fall into the error that other Christians have.