FAIR

Revelation

Asking Big Questions: Why Is Going to Church Important?

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by Lyndie Jackson

The “Asking Big Questions” series is made in cooperation with the Wilford Woodruff Papers Project.

Saturdays and Sundays are safeguarded days for most people. Between school, work and other activities, our weeks get hectic and weekends are reserved for relaxing with family and friends and accomplishing tasks that could not be finished during the week. But faithful members of The Church of Jesus Christ of Latter-day Saints, along with members of other religions, carve out time during their weekends to attend church meetings.

Church attendance is important for many reasons, not the least of which are to worship God, to feel the Spirit, and to keep God’s commandment to honor the Sabbath day. There are many other reasons to attend church meetings, such as renewing our covenants with God, learning the gospel, and joining a community of believers. Our lives can be exceedingly blessed by going to church, even (and maybe especially) when it feels like a sacrifice.

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“Beware lest ye are deceived”

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While traveling to western Missouri in the fall of 1830, Oliver Cowdery, Parley P. Pratt, Peter Whitmer Jr., and Ziba Peterson made a stop in Kirtland, Ohio to preach the gospel to some of Parley’s friends and former religious associates. While there, they taught and baptized more than a hundred individuals! They then ordained some of the men as Elders and placed them in charge of the affairs of the Church in that area. The missionaries then continued on to their assigned mission in Missouri.

Left to their limited understanding of the restored gospel, which included a renewal of the gift of the Holy Ghost and spiritual gifts, a few of these newly ordained Elders and members began experiencing unusual spiritual phenomena during their worship services. These included ecstatically jumping up and down, swinging from ceiling joists, falling into trances and unconsciousness, seeing visions of parchments with written messages from heaven, crawling around like snakes on the floor, preaching in tongues to invisible congregations of Lamanites, wielding invisible swords of Laban, and so forth.

Of course, these practices drew the ridicule of outsiders in the community, including in the local press, and gave plenty of fodder for the first anti-Mormon book, Mormonism Unvailed.

Asking Big Questions: How Do I Deal with Questions I Don’t Have the Answers To?

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by Craig Lindquist

The “Asking Big Questions” series is made in cooperation with the Wilford Woodruff Papers Project.

Have you ever felt that the proverbial “windows of heaven” are too often fastened tightly shut for you? You would not be alone, as most of us have. Assuming that they are not shut because of serious misdeeds, what do we do when we need the revelation that flows through those windows but cannot get it? There is no easy answer. Even after much prayer, fasting, studying the scriptures, or conversations with priesthood leaders, answers can still be hard to find. Nevertheless, in our own struggle we can gain much understanding and appreciation for others who also search for answers from above.

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FAIR Questions: What did President Nelson mean by “the kind of body with which you will be resurrected” in his General Conference talk?

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FAIR has a service where questions can be submitted and they are answered by volunteers. If you have a question, you can submit it at https://www.fairlatterdaysaints.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:

In the time since General Conference, we have had several questions about the resurrection – whether our bodies will be resurrected in their perfect form, and what the difference would be between a Celestial versus a Terrestrial or Telestial resurrected body. [Read more…] about FAIR Questions: What did President Nelson mean by “the kind of body with which you will be resurrected” in his General Conference talk?

Sacrifice and Obedience: Lessons from Zion’s Camp

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by Matthew C. Godfrey

One of the seminal events of Wilford Woodruff’s life was his participation in the Camp of Israel (later known as Zion’s Camp) expedition in 1834. Wilford was recruited to participate in the camp after he had been a member of the Church for only a few weeks. The camp was the first time he got to meet individuals such as Joseph Smith, Brigham Young, and Heber C. Kimball, and it taught him several lessons. Wilford transmitted these lessons to the Saints throughout his life, and they are teachings that can benefit Church members today as well.

Zion’s Camp Overview [Read more…] about Sacrifice and Obedience: Lessons from Zion’s Camp

Letter For My Wife Rebuttal, Part 23: The Early Church – Blacks and the Church [D]

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This post will be the last in the section about race and the Priesthood restriction. I apologize for not getting this up sooner. My offline life has been a little crazy this summer, and I just didn’t have the time to do this post justice until today. It’s an important topic, and I wanted to make sure I was able to treat it with the respect it deserves.

The bulk of the conversation this week is about the idea that the prophets can never lead the Church astray:

[Read more…] about Letter For My Wife Rebuttal, Part 23: The Early Church – Blacks and the Church [D]

Letter For My Wife Rebuttal, Part 21: The Early Church – Blacks and the Church [B]

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As we pick up with the difficult racial quotes this week, I want to start again with the disclaimer that neither I nor anyone else at FAIR agrees with or condones the words and attitudes on display in these comments. I am not defending their use. I am just putting some history and context back into them, so that we can all approach them with a little more knowledge than we may have previously held. That doesn’t make them easier to digest. Some of them are pretty awful, and it’s incredibly difficult for me to understand how someone can hold those views about other children of God.

[Read more…] about Letter For My Wife Rebuttal, Part 21: The Early Church – Blacks and the Church [B]

Letter For My Wife Rebuttal, Part 20: The Early Church – Blacks and the Church [A]

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We’re now moving into one of the most controversial topics in our church’s history, the Priesthood restriction for black members of African descent. Like plural marriage, this is a topic that comes with a lot of emotion behind it. People have very strong feelings about this part of our history, and for good reason. I’m no exception to that. I’ll be discussing quotes, attitudes, and beliefs that I personally find appalling.

But like I always say, history is messy. Expecting it to be easy is naïve.

There are two things that are absolutely imperative to understand when we’re talking about these things.

[Read more…] about Letter For My Wife Rebuttal, Part 20: The Early Church – Blacks and the Church [A]

Come, Follow Me with FAIR: Faithful Answers to New Testament Questions – Matthew 28; Mark 16; Luke 24; John 20–21

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Podcast: Download (37.2MB)

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Evangelical Questions: Baptism for the Dead

by Jennifer Roach, MDiv, LMHC

Welcome back to Come Follow Me with FAIR: Faithful Answers to New Testament Questions. My name is Jennifer Roach and today we’re going to talk about baptism for the dead. As you know we’re going through the Come Follow Me readings and addressing common questions that Evangelicals ask about our faith as we go along. Our purpose here is not to fuel debate but to help you understand where your Evangelical friends and family are coming from so that you can have better conversations with them, and perhaps even be able to offer them a bit of our faith in a way they can understand. [Read more…] about Come, Follow Me with FAIR: Faithful Answers to New Testament Questions – Matthew 28; Mark 16; Luke 24; John 20–21

Letter For My Wife Rebuttal, Part 18: The Early Church – Polygamy [C]

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Sorry for taking so long to get this posted! I’ve been putting in more than 60 hours a week at work lately, and I just didn’t have time to properly research this post until now.

This week, the topic under discussion is Joseph’s wives and the way that he personally practiced plural marriage. It’s true that some of the circumstances a little unusual compared to how later members practiced it, and it’s also true that sealing practices in general were unusual compared to how we practice them today. The world was also very different in the 1840s than it is today in the 2020s.

All of that means that it can be very difficult for us to understand what was going on and why. I’m going to do my best to break this all down so that it makes sense, but just remember, it’s okay if it makes you uncomfortable. It’s okay if you don’t like the idea of plural marriage. It’s okay if you don’t ever want to practice it. I don’t, either.

[Read more…] about Letter For My Wife Rebuttal, Part 18: The Early Church – Polygamy [C]