FAIR

Book of Mormon

FairMormon Conference Podcast #43 – Scott Gordon, “CES Letter: Proof or Propaganda?”

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This podcast series features past FairMormon Conference presentations. This presentation is from our 2019 conference held last month. If you would like to watch the presentations from our 2019 conference, you can still purchase the video streaming.

Scott Gordon, CES Letter: Proof or Propaganda?

Transcript available here.

Scott Gordon serves as President of FairMormon, a non-profit corporation staffed by volunteers dedicated to helping members deal with issues raised by critics of the LDS faith. He has an MBA from Brigham Young University, and a BA in Organizational Communications from Brigham Young University. He is currently an instructor of business and technology at Shasta College in Redding, California. Scott has held many positions in The Church of Jesus Christ of Latter-day Saints including serving as a bishop for six years. He is married and has five children.

Audio Copyright © 2019 The Foundation for Apologetic Information and Research, Inc. Any reproduction or transcription of this material without prior express written permission is prohibited.

FairMormon Conference Podcast #42 – Tad R. Callister, “A Case for the Book of Mormon”

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This podcast series features past FairMormon Conference presentations. This presentation is from our 2019 conference held last month. If you would like to watch the presentations from our 2019 conference, you can still purchase the video streaming.

Tad R. Callister, A Case for the Book of Mormon

Transcript available here.

Tad R. Callister was serving in the Presidency of the Seventy and as a member of the Second Quorum of the Seventy when he was called as Sunday School general president. He has served in a number of Church callings including full-time missionary in the Eastern Atlantic States Mission, bishop, stake president, regional representative, mission president, and Area Seventy.

Brother Callister received a bachelor of science degree in accounting from Brigham Young University, a Juris Doctorate degree from the University of California–Los Angeles, and a master’s degree in tax law from New York University Law School. He spent most of his professional career practicing tax law. He and his wife Kathryn Louise Saporiti are the parents of six children.

Audio Copyright © 2019 The Foundation for Apologetic Information and Research, Inc. Any reproduction or transcription of this material without prior express written permission is prohibited.

FairMormon Conference Podcast #41 – Jasmin Rappleye, “ScripturePlus: The Future of Scripture Study”

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This podcast series features past FairMormon Conference presentations. This presentation is from our 2019 conference held last month. If you would like to watch all the presentations from our 2019 conference, you can still purchase the video streaming.

Jasmin Rappleye, ScripturePlus: The Future of Scripture Study – A demo and discussion of Book of Mormon Central’s new scripture app, ScripturePlus

Jasmin is the Web Architect and Content Manager for Book of Mormon Central. She administrates all the web properties of Book of Mormon Central and provides computer support for our users. She also serves as their chief Graphic Designer and the Peer Review Coordinator for the publication of KnoWhys. She enjoys creating new ways to visualize the Book of Mormon and enjoys managing Book of Mormon Central’s volunteers.

She graduated magna cum laude from Brigham Young University in 2015 with a Bachelors’ degree in Ancient Near Eastern Studies. At Book of Mormon Central, she gets to combine her passion for religion in antiquity with her visual and technical skills. She enjoys creating new ways for users to digitally interact with the study of the Book of Mormon.

Audio and Video Copyright © 2019 The Foundation for Apologetic Information and Research, Inc. Any reproduction or transcription of this material without prior express written permission is prohibited.

FairMormon Conference Podcast #37 – Randall Spackman, “Chronological Structure and Symbolism in the Small Plates of Nephi”

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This podcast series features past FairMormon Conference presentations. This presentation is from our 2018 conference. If you would like to watch the presentations from our 2019 conference, you can still purchase the video streaming.

Randall Spackman, Chronological Structure and Symbolism in the Small Plates of Nephi

Transcript available here; handout available here.

For more than thirty years, Randall Proctor Spackman has pursued an avocational interest in the chronological texts of the Book of Mormon. Limited aspects of his work with these texts have been published as a FARMS Preliminary Report and in the Journal of Book of Mormon Studies and The FARMS Review. Since 2010, he has maintained www.bookofmormonchronology.net as a publishing venue for his most recent writings on selected chronological issues. This website was put on hiatus while he and his wife, Susan Sperry Spackman, served two missions as senior missionaries for the Mormon Church in 2015-2017. The website is currently being reorganized to reflect insights gained while they served in Besançon, France. These insights have led to comprehensive linguistic and semantic analyses of the 426 year-related expressions in the Book of Mormon. An introduction to the structure and symbolism of these expressions will be presented publicly for the first time at the 2018 FairMormon Conference.

Randall was born and raised in southern Alberta, Canada. He received B.A. and M.S. degrees from Brigham Young University and a J.D. degree from Duke University. For forty years, his law practice involved franchise, commercial and real estate transactions and litigation management for franchise companies headquartered in southern California. He also served as a member of the Franchise Law Committee of the California State Bar Association and as the President and Chief Executive Officer of Fantastic Sam’s, a multi-national franchise company with more than 1,300 franchised hair salons.

Randall and Susan, who is also a published author and was a special education teacher for more than twenty years, have been married for more than fifty years. Their principal residence is in Saint George, Utah. They are the parents of four children and the grandparents of seventeen grandchildren. Their first great grandchild is expected in September 2018.

Audio and Video Copyright © 2018 The Foundation for Apologetic Information and Research, Inc. Any reproduction or transcription of this material without prior express written permission is prohibited.

FairMormon Conference Podcast #36 – Elder Craig C. Christensen, “Foundations of Our Faith”

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This podcast series features past FairMormon Conference presentations. This presentation is from our 2019 conference that was held last week. You can still purchase the video streaming if you would like to watch all the presentations.

Elder Craig C. Christensen, Foundations of Our Faith

Elder Craig C. Christensen was sustained as a General Authority Seventy of The Church of Jesus Christ of Latter-day Saints on October 5, 2002. At the time of his call he was serving as a member of the Fifth Quorum of the Seventy in the Utah South Area.

As a General Authority, Elder Christensen served as President of the Mexico South Area from 2003 to 2007 while living in Mexico City. He has also served in various departments and assignments at Church headquarters, such as Executive Director of the Priesthood and Family Department. He is currently serving in the Missionary Department.

Elder Christensen graduated from Brigham Young University with a bachelor’s degree in accounting. He went on to earn a master of business administration from the University of Washington. Over the years, he has been a visiting instructor of business and religion courses at several universities, including Brigham Young University.

At the time of his call as a General Authority, Elder Christensen was a self-employed businessman in the retail automotive, insurance, and real estate development industries. He previously worked as an executive with several privately owned companies and with an international accounting and consulting firm based in San Francisco, California.

Elder Craig C. Christensen was born in Salt Lake City, Utah, on March 18, 1956. He married Debbie Jones in March 1978. They are the parents of four children.

Audio and Video Copyright © 2019 The Foundation for Apologetic Information and Research, Inc. Any reproduction or transcription of this material without prior express written permission is prohibited.

FairMormon Conference Podcast #35 – Jeff Lindsay, “‘Arise from the Dust’: Digging into a Vital Book of Mormon Theme”

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This podcast series features past FairMormon Conference presentations. Please join us for the 2019 FairMormon Conference coming up August 7-9! You can attend in person (tickets are no longer being sold online, but will be available at the door) or purchase the video streaming.

Jeff Lindsay, “Arise from the Dust”: Digging into a Vital Book of Mormon Theme

Transcript available here.

Jeffrey Dean Lindsay and his wife, Kendra, are residents of Shanghai, China. Jeff has been providing online materials defending the LDS faith for over twenty years, primarily at JeffLindsay.com. His Mormanity blog has been in operation since 2004. He also wrote weekly for Orson Scott Card’s Nauvoo Times from 2012 through 2016. Jeff has a PhD in chemical engineering from BYU and is a registered U.S. patent agent. He serves as Head of Intellectual Property for Asia Pulp and Paper, one of the world’s largest paper companies. Formerly, he was associate professor at the Institute of Paper Science (now the Renewable Bioproducts Institute) at Georgia Tech, then went into R&D at Kimberly-Clark Corporation, eventually becoming corporate patent strategist and senior research fellow. He then spent several years at Innovationedge in Neenah, Wisconsin, helping many companies with innovation and IP strategy. Jeff has been in China for five years, where he works with various APP companies and mills in advancing their intellectual property and innovation. Since 2015, Jeff has been recognized as a leading IP strategist by Intellectual Asset Magazine in their global IAM300 listing based on peer input. He is also lead author of Conquering Innovation Fatigue (John Wiley & Sons, 2009). He is active in the chemical engineering community and was recently named a Fellow of the American Institute of Chemical Engineers. Jeff served a mission in the German‑speaking Switzerland Zurich Mission and currently serves as counselor in the district presidency of the Shanghai International District. He and his wife Kendra are the parents of four boys and have nine grandchildren.

Audio and Video Copyright © 2018 The Foundation for Apologetic Information and Research, Inc. Any reproduction or transcription of this material without prior express written permission is prohibited.

FairMormon Questions: Why does Nephi quote from Isaiah in the Book of Mormon?

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FairMormon has a service where questions can be submitted and they are answered by volunteers. If you have a question, you can submit it at http://www.fairmormon.org/contact. We will occasionally publish answers here for questions that are commonly asked, or are on topics that are receiving a lot of attention.

QUESTION:

Why are chapters 12 – 24 in 2 Nephi in the Book of Mormon? They are hard to understand. What meaning can be obtained by reading them? Why are they present?

ANSWER FROM FAIRMORMON VOLUNTEER MICHAEL HICKENBOTHAM:

I assume you realized these chapters contain 12 Isaiah chapters (Isaiah 2-14) with some slight modifications. These are part of 21 chapters of Isaiah found throughout the Book of Mormon. A few years back I thought about why so many chapters of Isaiah were included in the Book of Mormon and after researching the subject, I wrote the following: [Read more…] about FairMormon Questions: Why does Nephi quote from Isaiah in the Book of Mormon?

FairMormon Conference Podcast #33 – Sara Riley, “‘Even as Moses Did’: The Use of the Exodus Narrative in Mosiah 11-18”

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This podcast series features past FairMormon Conference presentations. Please join us for the 2019 FairMormon Conference coming up August 7-9! You can attend in person or purchase the video streaming.

Sara Riley, “Even as Moses Did”: The Use of the Exodus Narrative in Mosiah 11-18

Transcript available here.

Sara Riley graduated cum laude with a BA in Ancient Near Eastern Studies from BYU, and is currently working as a web designer part-time. She has published work on women hand drummers in ancient Israel and is interested in using technology to help spread Book of Mormon scholarship. At the moment, she continues to apply her knowledge of the ancient world to the Book of Mormon, all the while chasing around her toddler.

Audio Copyright © 2018 The Foundation for Apologetic Information and Research, Inc. Any reproduction or transcription of this material without prior express written permission is prohibited.

Book Review: A Documentary History of The Book of Mormon

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Available from the FairMormon Bookstore

Larry E. Morris has written books on the exploration of the American West as well as several papers on Oliver Cowdery and the other witnesses of the Book of Mormon. He also served as an editor of the Joseph Smith Papers Project. He gave a presentation at the 2007 FAIR Conference and he will be speaking at the upcoming FairMormon Conference on August 8.

In this book, Morris brings together for the first time a single volume collection of primary source documents pertaining to the production of the Book of Mormon. The documents are annotated and introductory essays are included that give us the context. He draws on the work of authors such as Richard Bushman, Terryl Givens, D. Michael Quinn, Fawn Brodie, Dan Vogel, Richard Van Wagoner, Grant Palmer, and Dale Morgan, where applicable, while not hesitating to also provide critiques on their work as necessary. [Read more…] about Book Review: A Documentary History of The Book of Mormon

FairMormon Conference Podcast #31 – Wade Miller, “The Presence of Pre-Columbian Horses in America”

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This podcast series features past FairMormon Conference presentations. Please join us for the 2019 FairMormon Conference coming up August 7-9! You can attend in person or purchase the video streaming.

Wade Miller, The Presence of Pre-Columbian Horses in America

Transcript available here.

Wade E. Miller is a professor of geology and paleontology, retired from Brigham Young University. He earned his MS in geology from the University of Arizona and his Ph.D. in paleontology from UC Berkeley. Besides teaching at BYU, Wade has taught at Fullerton Junior College and at Santa Ana College. He has served, at various times, as paleontological advisor for the U.S. Bureau of Land Management, the State of Utah, the Las Vegas Natural History Museum, the University of Mexico, and the University of Hidalgo (Mexico). During his career Wade published or co-published over 80 scientific articles or books. He is currently a research associate at the Natural History Museum of Los Angeles County. Wade has served in numerous callings, including as a teacher and a bishop. He is married to the former Patricia Haws and is the father of three children (all sons).

Audio Copyright © 2018 The Foundation for Apologetic Information and Research, Inc. Any reproduction or transcription of this material without prior express written permission is prohibited.