By René Krywult
This week’s Come, Follow Me lesson starts with the following words:
The afternoon of June 27, 1844, found Joseph and Hyrum Smith in jail once again, accompanied by John Taylor and Willard Richards. They believed they were innocent of any crime, but they submitted to arrest, hoping to prevent violence against the Saints in Nauvoo.
There were several reasons for this arrest: [Read more…] about Come, Follow Me Week 48 – Doctrine and Covenants 135-136
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This podcast series features past FAIR Conference presentations. This presentation is from our 2021 conference held in August. If you would like to watch the presentations from the conference, you can still purchase the video streaming.
Mike Ash, Rethinking Revelation and the Human Element in Scripture: The Prophet’s Role as Creative Co-Author
Mike’s book is available from the FAIR bookstore.
Michael R. Ash, a FairMormon member for more than twenty years, has been featured in nearly 90 podcasts and 30 videos. In more than two decades of writing LDS-themed material, and as a former weekly columnist for Mormon Times (owned by the Deseret News), his works include over 160 on-line articles, as well as articles in periodicals such as the Ensign, Sunstone, Neal A. Maxwell Institute’s FARMS Review, and Dialogue: A Journal of Mormon Thought.
Michael is also the author of four LDS books. In 2008 FAIR published his book Shaken Faith Syndrome: Strengthening One’s Testimony in the Face of Criticism and Doubt (which is available in English, German, and Italian). Mike quickly followed this publication with his second book, Of Faith and Reason: 80 Evidences Supporting the Prophet Joseph Smith. In 2015 Michael published Bamboozled by the CES Letter: An honest response to the .pdf pamphlet entitled “Letter to a CES Director”, and this year he has introduced his newest book, Rethinking Revelation and the Human Element in Scripture: The Prophet’s Role as Creative Co-Author.
By Cassandra Hedelius
It’s difficult to write this post, because the subject is baptism for the dead, and my grandpa is dying, and I love him, and he’s never accepted the gospel. His death from old age isn’t tragic, but it would be if we didn’t have so much revelation from God about His plan. For this, I thank God for prophets.
When Joseph’s older brother Alvin died, a minister preached at his funeral and “intimated very strongly that [Alvin] had gone to hell, for Alvin was not a church member.”[1] This was obviously a tactless thing to say to a grieving family, but based on the knowledge that minister had, he wasn’t really wrong! The Bible is pretty clear that baptism is an eternal necessity. What that minister needed wasn’t sensitivity training, but more revealed truth. Let’s take the charitable view that he would have been ecstatic to learn that Alvin was not in fact damned, and that God is perfectly able to overcome paltry obstacles like people dying before having a chance to accept the truth. [Read more…] about Come, Follow Me Week 45 – Doctrine and Covenants 125-128
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This podcast series features past FAIR Conference presentations. This presentation is from our 2021 conference held in August. If you would like to watch the presentations from our 2021 conference, you can still purchase the video streaming.
Jeffrey Thayne, Worldview Apologetics: Revealing the Waters in Which We Swim
A transcript is available here.
Jeffrey’s book, Who Is Truth: Reframing Our Questions for a Richer Faith, is available from our bookstore.
Dr. Jeffrey Thayne graduated from BYU with a bachelor’s and master’s degree in psychology. He completed his doctorate in Instructional Technology and Learning Sciences at Utah State University. He runs the popular Latter-day Saint Philosopher blog, and spends time engaging in worldview apologetics (articulating and exploring the worldview assumptions that inform our faith). He currently resides in Washington state with his wife and two children.
By Cassandra Hedelius
In 1840, John C. Bennett was baptized a member of the Church of Jesus Christ. His wife and children didn’t come with him to Nauvoo, and it’s not clear what his original motive was for posing as a bachelor instead of being truthful about his family status. His eventual motive was extremely clear: as Bennett ingratiated himself to Joseph and other leaders, and gained high religious and civic positions, he lied to women in order to take advantage of them sexually. Bennett is one of the earliest and most egregious cases of a conundrum we’re each likely to sometime face: if the church is guided by revelation, how do bad people fool its leaders? [Read more…] about Come, Follow Me Week 44 – Doctrine and Covenants 124
(This is from a presentation given at the 2017 FairMormon Conference)
While I will cover nineteenth-century economics and the Kirtland bank briefly in my presentation today, I also want to focus on the period of spiritual crisis in Kirtland in 1837 and ways I hope we can learn from the Kirtland experience for our current moment of spiritual crisis.
The crisis within the Mormon community of Kirtland has been inseparably connected to the founding and subsequent failure of the church’s Kirtland bank. However, there is too often a direct causal connection assumed between the bank and the 1837 crisis. The focus of my presentation today is to demonstrate the complexity of this period of history, contextualize both the bank and the crisis, and address several prevailing assumptions about each.
Although most Kirtland narratives place the bank amid the financial devastation of 1837, the Kirtland Safety Society Bank was organized in November 1836. As such, understanding developments in Kirtland in 1836 is key. [Read more…] about Come, Follow Me Week 41 – Doctrine and Covenants 111-114
These three presentations are important to families and Church leaders of all faiths. We hope you will watch them and share them with your Latter-day Saint, and non-Latter-day Saint, friends.
Jeffrey Thayne – “Worldview Apologetics: Revealing the Waters in Which We Swim” (transcript)
Carl Trueman – “The Rise and Triumph of the Modern Self: Cultural Amnesia, Expressive Individualism, and the Road to Sexual Revolution”
Jeffrey Thayne is from BYUI, Carl Trueman is with Grove City College and is an Orthodox Presbyterian, and Ed Gantt is from BYU.
This is a reposting from a previous blog to highlight the conference presentations.
by Cassandra Hedelius
I very much love “The Chosen,” the dramatization of the ministry of Jesus and his disciples that just finished its second season. It’s a beautiful portrayal of Jesus’ love, authority, humanity, and divinity.
Recent events made a particular scene come to mind with even greater power and relevance. As Jesus and his disciples leave Capernaum, they discuss which route to take. One disciple points out they need to turn in order to go around Samaria. All the disciples simply assumed they would avoid Samaria in their travels because of the vicious hostility between Samaritans and Jews. Jesus shocked them all by saying that they were going to go right into Samaria. One disciple, thinking Jesus needed reminding, explained that it was safer to go around. Jesus replied: “Did you join me for safety reasons?”
We do indeed follow the Lord because he is the only source of our ultimate safety, spiritual safety from the enemy of our souls. But the history of the church and these sections in particular are stark reminders that the covenant path is not a guarantee of our immediate physical safety. [Read more…] about Come, Follow Me Week 38 – Doctrine and Covenants 102–105
In the summer of 1830, while The Church of Jesus Christ of Latter-day Saints was yet in its infancy, Oliver Cowdery, “the second elder of [the] church” (D&C 20:3), wrote Joseph Smith, saying, “I command you in the name of God to erase those words, that no priestcraft be amongst us.” Oliver Cowdery was referring to words Joseph Smith added to Doctrine and Covenants 20:37. Oliver disapproved of a phrase included in the list of requirements for baptism: “And truly manifest by their works that they have received of the Spirit of Christ unto the remission of their sins.”
Joseph, the Prophet, was astonished and saddened. He knew that this baptismal requirement had come by revelation from the Lord. Joseph “immediately wrote to [Oliver] in reply, in which [Joseph] asked him by what authority [Oliver,] took upon him to command [him] to alter or erase…a revelation…from Almighty God.”
by Cassandra Hedelius
Late last year, I started brainstorming suggestions for who we could invite to present at the 2021 FAIR conference. We usually look for presenters to counter criticisms of the church on issues like polygamy, Book of Mormon translation, and race. But in addition to these, I wanted this conference to provide more immediately vital resources for parents, building on John Gee’s excellent presentation in 2020. Children are bombarded with not only explicit arguments, but very subtle messages that shape their imaginations and moral judgment in ways that make it very difficult to accept divine authority and parental guidance. I’m the mother of three young children, and my dearest hope is to succeed at building their faith in the Lord, His church, and the prophets and other leaders He calls. I was determined to find speakers that would significantly help me and other parents like me.
Around that time, I started reading a new book by Carl Trueman: The Rise and Triumph of the Modern Self: Cultural Amnesia, Expressive Individualism, and the Road to Sexual Revolution. I was instantly captivated by Trueman’s skill at naming and explaining cultural forces that I had dimly intuited but never fully grasped. His bracing exposition gave me the consciousness and competence I need to shape my childrens’ worldviews instead of allowing them to be shaped by the world’s philosophies. [Read more…] about Three Conference Presentations Now Available to Help Parents, Leaders, and Other Teachers of Children and Youth
