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Revelation

FAIR Conference Podcast #77 – Jennifer Ann Mackley, “Discovering Church History: The Wilford Woodruff Papers Project”

February 1, 2022 by Trevor Holyoak

https://media.blubrry.com/mormonfaircast/www.fairlatterdaysaints.org/wp-content/uploads/2022/02/Jennifer-Ann-Mackley.mp3

Podcast: Download (11.5MB)

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This podcast series features past FAIR Conference presentations. This presentation is from our 2021 conference. If you would like to watch all the presentations from that conference, you can still purchase the video streaming.

Jennifer Ann Mackley, Discovering Church History: The Wilford Woodruff Papers Project

Jennifer’s book is available from the FAIR Bookstore.

Jennifer Ann Mackley, JD, is the Executive Director of the Wilford Woodruff Papers Foundation, which she co-founded with Donald W. Parry in 2020. In addition to her legal practice as a partner in Mackley & Mackley, PLLC, Jennifer has authored or edited 21 books including Wilford Woodruff’s Witness: The Development of Temple Doctrine. She has been serving as a historian for the Wilford Woodruff Family Association since 2014 and has made numerous presentations and podcasts based on her research of Wilford Woodruff’s life and, through his records, the development of temple doctrine in the 19th century. Jennifer served in the Minnesota Minneapolis Mission and has been a temple worker in the Provo, Washington, D.C, Chicago, Salt Lake, and Seattle temples. She and her husband Carter are the parents of three adored children.

Filed Under: FAIR Conference, FAIR Conference, Joseph Smith, LDS History, Podcast, Priesthood, Prophets, Revelation, Temples

Come, Follow Me Week 5 – Moses 7

January 24, 2022 by Trevor Holyoak

Faith and Evidence in

the Witness of Ancient Texts for the Book of Moses Enoch Story

by Jeffrey M. Bradshaw

Left: President Russell M. Nelson looks up in a photo included with his first message of 2022;[1] Right: Enoch looks up as he is taken up to the presence of God. Frederick James Shields (1833–1911): Enoch (detail), 1910. Stained glass design for the Chapel of the Ascension, Bayswater Road, London.[2]
When I first saw the photo that accompanied the New Year’s message and invitation for 2022 from President Nelson,[3] I could not help but think of the following verses from the Joseph Smith Translation of Genesis about the city of Enoch (JST Genesis 9:21–22): [Read more…] about Come, Follow Me Week 5 – Moses 7

Filed Under: Bible, Book of Moses, Come Follow Me, Evidences, Joseph Smith, Languages, Old Testament, Prophets, Revelation

FAIR Conference Podcast #74 – Jenny Reeder, “First: The Life and Faith of Emma Smith”

January 12, 2022 by Trevor Holyoak

https://media.blubrry.com/mormonfaircast/www.fairlatterdaysaints.org/wp-content/uploads/2022/01/Jenny-Reeder.mp3

Podcast: Download (11.3MB)

Subscribe: RSS

This podcast series features past FAIR Conference presentations. This presentation is from our 2021 conference held in August. If you would like to watch all the presentations from the conference, you can still purchase the video streaming.

Jenny Reeder, First: The Life and Faith of Emma Smith

Jenny Reader’s books are for sale in the FAIR bookstore.

Jenny Reeder is the nineteenth-century women’s history specialist at the Church History Department for the Church of Jesus Christ of Latter-day Saints. She has a PhD in American history from George Mason University, and an MA from New York University in history, archival management, and documentary editing. Jenny is on the Church Historian’s Press Editorial Board, the Center for Latter-day Saint Arts Advisory Board, the Mormon History Association’s book awards committee, and the editorial board of Mormon Historical Studies. She has taught at BYU Education Week and has been a featured speaker at BYU Women’s Conference, the BYU Easter Conference, and Time Out for Women. She recently published First: The Life and Faith of Emma Smith with Deseret Book, and past publications include At the Pulpit: 185 Years of Discourses by Latter-day Saint Women and Witness of Women: Firsthand Experiences and Testimonies of the Restoration. She leads the “Discourses of Eliza R. Snow” project, collecting and publishing all of Snow’s sermons on the Church Historian’s Press website and a selection of discourses in an upcoming print volume.

Filed Under: Book of Mormon, FAIR Conference, FAIR Conference, Joseph Smith, Podcast, Revelation, Testimonies, Women

Come, Follow Me Week 3 – Genesis 3–4; Moses 4–5

January 11, 2022 by Trevor Holyoak

The Two Trees

by V.H. Cassler

(This is from a presentation given at the 2010 FAIR Conference)

The Restored Gospel teaches me that the term “God” means an exalted woman and an exalted man married in the new and everlasting covenant (and we also get that from D&C 132). We are taught that there is no God without men and women loving each other as equals. Heavenly Father is not an old bachelor. In fact, the one who’s an old bachelor is Satan. This is revolutionary.

Second, the Restored Gospel teaches me that you will have your male or female body forever. It is not a curse, but a great gift and a blessing that you had to prove yourself worthy to have. Women in the audience, your breasts, your womb, your ovaries, are not cursings, sisters, they are blessings. And the Restored Gospel also teaches me that I will be married forever, and that I will have children forever, and that that life of being a woman married to my sweetheart and having children forever is the life that will bring me the fullest joy. [Read more…] about Come, Follow Me Week 3 – Genesis 3–4; Moses 4–5

Filed Under: Bible, Book of Moses, Chastity, Come Follow Me, Doctrine and Covenants, FAIR Conference, Gender Issues, Jesus Christ, Marriage, Old Testament, Priesthood, Revelation, Women

FAIR Conference Podcast #73 – Ben Spackman, “Through a Glass, Less Darkly: The 20th Century History of Genesis and Evolution”

January 3, 2022 by Trevor Holyoak

https://media.blubrry.com/mormonfaircast/www.fairlatterdaysaints.org/wp-content/uploads/2022/01/Ben-Spackman.mp3

Podcast: Download (12.6MB)

Subscribe: RSS

This podcast series features past FAIR Conference presentations. This presentation is from our 2021 conference held in August. If you would like to watch all the presentations from the conference, you can still purchase the video streaming.

Ben Spackman, Through a Glass, Less Darkly: The 20th Century History of Genesis and Evolution

Ben Spackman is a PhD candidate in American Religious History at Claremont. His dissertation examines the intellectual roots of LDS creationism and evolution in the 20th century. Prior to his work at Claremont, he received a master’s degree and did PhD work in Old Testament languages and literature at the University of Chicago. He is a guest editor of a special edition of BYU Studies dedicated to biological evolution and LDS faith, and writes at BenSpackman.com.

Filed Under: Bible, FAIR Conference, FAIR Conference, Jesus Christ, Joseph Smith, LDS History, Podcast, Prophets, Revelation, Science

Come, Follow Me Week 1 – Moses 1; Abraham 3

January 1, 2022 by Trevor Holyoak

How did we get the books of Moses and Abraham?

The Come, Follow Me manual poses this question and gives links to articles on the Church’s website about the Joseph Smith Translation of the Bible and the Translation and Historicity of the Book of Abraham. For further information, the following resources are available from FAIR and other trusted sites:

An Introduction to the Book of Abraham – the full text of this book by John Gee is available online for free from the publisher. (Click on the chapter titles to go to the text. You can also download PDF files from within each chapter that include photos and illustrations, which are very helpful.)

YouTube playlist of videos from FAIR on the Book of Abraham

Book of Abraham section of our website with common questions and answers

Book of Moses section of our website with common questions and answers

Interpreter Foundation 2021 Book of Moses Conference videos – Kent P. Jackson’s “How We Got the Joseph Smith Translation, the Book of Moses, and Joseph Smith—Matthew” is a good place to start.

More Come, Follow Me resources here.

 

Filed Under: Bible, Book of Abraham, Book of Moses, Come Follow Me, Joseph Smith, LDS History, Prophets, Revelation

FAIR Conference Podcast #72 – Dan Peterson, “The Book of Mormon Witnesses: Sincerity and Reality”

December 27, 2021 by Trevor Holyoak

https://media.blubrry.com/mormonfaircast/www.fairlatterdaysaints.org/wp-content/uploads/2021/12/Dan-Peterson.mp3

Podcast: Download (11.8MB)

Subscribe: RSS

This podcast series features past FAIR Conference presentations. This presentation is from our 2021 conference held in August. If you would like to watch all the presentations from the conference, you can still purchase the video streaming.

Dan Peterson, The Book of Mormon Witnesses: Sincerity and Reality

The Witnesses film and books by Dan Peterson are available from the FAIR Bookstore.

Daniel C. Peterson (PhD, UCLA) is a professor of Islamic studies and Arabic at Brigham Young University and founder of the university’s Middle Eastern Texts Initiative. He has published and spoken extensively on both Islamic and Mormon subjects. Formerly chairman of the board of the Foundation for Ancient Research and Mormon Studies (FARMS) and an officer, editor, and author for its successor organization, the Neal A. Maxwell Institute for Religious Scholarship, his professional work as an Arabist focuses on the Qur’an and on Islamic philosophical theology. He is the author, among other things, of a biography entitled Muhammad: Prophet of God (Eerdmans, 2007). Dan currently serves as the president of the Interpreter Foundation.

Filed Under: Book of Mormon, FAIR Conference, FAIR Conference, Jesus Christ, Joseph Smith, LDS History, Podcast, Revelation

Rethinking Revelation and the Human Element in Scripture

December 23, 2021 by Trevor Holyoak

Available in the FAIR Bookstore

by Michael R. Ash

Those who have read any of my writings in the past several decades will know that I’ve been a volunteer for FAIR for more than twenty years. I’m an active Latter-day Saint who accepts prophets as the divinely called and authorized agents of Christ’s church on earth. And, like many other believing members, scholars, and LDS-scientists, I also try to think rationally and logically, and I embrace the general conclusions of secular science and “objective” history.

Faith-Crisis

In the more than forty years that I’ve been reading and writing about LDS scholarly issues (including the twenty years I’ve been volunteering for FAIR), I’ve spent a lot of time analyzing the intellectual reasons people leave the faith. Obviously, there are many reasons that people leave the Church, but I’ve always been interested in the historical and scientific issues that unseat some LDS testimonies. [Read more…] about Rethinking Revelation and the Human Element in Scripture

Filed Under: Bible, Book of Abraham, Book of Mormon, Book of Moses, Doctrine and Covenants, Faith Crisis, Joseph Smith, LDS History, Michael R. Ash, Prophets, Revelation, Science

Book Review: “In the Hands of the Lord: The Life of Dallin H. Oaks”

December 12, 2021 by Trevor Holyoak

Available from the FAIR Bookstore

This biography of Dallin H. Oaks was written by Richard E. Turley, Jr., who has been associated with Oaks throughout most of his (Turley’s) professional life. Turley has served as the Director of the Church History Department (originally selected to work for the department by Oaks), Assistant Church Historian, and Director of Public Affairs. He has previously written or co-written several other books, including Victims: The LDS Church and the Mark Hoffman Case and Massacre at Mountain Meadows: An American Tragedy.

Dallin Harris Oaks was born August 12, 1932 in Provo, Utah. He got his middle name from his mom’s side of the family, who was descended from a brother of Martin Harris. He grew up in Provo; Twin Falls, Idaho; Payson (where he stayed with his grandparents at times due to the death of his father when he was 7); and Vernal. He came close to dying several times in his childhood, beginning with his birth, with miraculous preservation of his life occurring each time. [Read more…] about Book Review: “In the Hands of the Lord: The Life of Dallin H. Oaks”

Filed Under: Book reviews, Doctrine, General Conference, Jesus Christ, LDS History, Priesthood, Prophets, Revelation, Science, Testimonies

Inspiration, Intellect, and Rethinking Revelation

December 11, 2021 by Trevor Holyoak

by Michael R. Ash

for FAIR Newsletter 2021 1211

Inspiration and Intellect are two sides of the same coin in how Latter-day Saints believe that God communicates with His children. We know that the Spirit testifies to eternal truths, but we often forget (or neglect) the role that intellect plays in uncovering truth. The late Apostle Hugh B. Brown said, “revelation does not come only through the prophet of God nor only directly from heaven in visions or dreams. Revelation may come in the laboratory, out of the test tube, out of the thinking mind and the inquiring soul, out of search and research and prayer and inspiration.”[i] Likewise, the Lord instructed the Saints to “seek learning… by study and also by faith” (D&C 88:118). This counsel was repeated several more times in modern revelations (see D&C 11:22, 90:15, 93:53; and 109: 7, 14), and the admonition led Joseph to establish the “School of the Prophets” (D&C 88:127).

The dual-nature or dual-sources for discovering truth presents some challenges, however. The first challenge is that neither source—neither inspiration nor intellect—can provide infallible and inerrant data.

The Challenge of Inspiration [Read more…] about Inspiration, Intellect, and Rethinking Revelation

Filed Under: Bible, Book of Abraham, Book of Mormon, Faith Crisis, Joseph Smith, Michael R. Ash, Newsletter, Prophets, Revelation, Science

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