Search results for: “hell part 2”
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Hell Part 2: Lake of Fire and Brimstone
Back when I first was invited to join T&S I started doing a series on Hell in the Book of Mormon. This is the long delayed follow up. Last time I discussed the three broad categories of how hell has been viewed theologically. This time I want to start focusing on the metaphors and typology…
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“What the Hell Is Happening in Somalia?” – Part 2
Somalia is the kind of country where a New York City Department of Transportation worker can be invited over to become prime minister. Following a year of primely ministration, he quit yesterday…and now he’s back to working at his old job in New York City. But back to Ghedi. Ghedi, 13 years old, was born…
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CFM 6/22-6/28: Thoughts and Poetry for “Hear Thou in Heaven Their Prayer”
Prayer is basically communication. We think of it as more than that, but the whole idea of prayer is to talk — specifically to talk to God and through it put ourselves in a state where we can hear Him. The whole point is to make contact and hear what we need to know. We…
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Cutting Edge Latter-day Saint Research, May 2026
Nielsen, Chad L. A Barn Full of Angels: The Spiritual World and Pioneer Journey of Zerah Pulsipher. Greg Kofford Books, 2026. [Our very own Chad Nielsen]! A Barn Full of Angels: The Spiritual World and Pioneer Journey of Zerah Pulsipher explores the extraordinary life of an early Latter-day Saint whose faith was shaped by visions,…
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CFM 5/18-5/24: Thoughts and Poetry for “Be Strong and of a Good Courage”
Trying to find images that go with the poetry I collect for these lessons is often frustrating. It seems like all the images I find in image searches have text written across the image, as if the image itself can’t communicate what needs to be said. In addition, many images consist of hikers or climbers…
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Cutting Edge Latter-day Saint Research, April 2026
Note: There were a couple articles in the latest issue of Dialogue that were labelled as “Research Articles” but were more in the personal essay genre, which is fine! Personal essays are great, but this list would be huge if I included all the major personal essays published every month, so I have to draw…
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CFM 2/23-3/1: Poetry for “Is Any Thing Too Hard for the Lord?”
Many of the difficulties that we face in our lives in the gospel come down to assumptions we make about God. We expect a consistency according to our conception of things. In short, we expect a vending machine, instead of God. So the answer to the question about what could be too hard for the…
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CFM 2/2-2/8: Poetry for “The Lord Called His People Zion”
For me, this lesson (to be taught February 8th — I work 2 weeks ahead) might be one of the most important lessons of the whole Come Follow Me cycle. The example of Enoch and the idea of Zion, our utopian ideal, lead to important questions about what we do today and how we organize…
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CFM 1/26-2/1: Poetry for “Teach These Things Freely unto Your Children”
I’m old enough that when thinking about teaching children my mind quickly goes to the wonderful and insightful Crosby, Stills, Nash & Young song, “Teach Your Children Well”. Most of all, the song points out an often overlooked element of teaching, that we really don’t know and can’t completely understand what our children have gone…
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CFM 1/12-1/18: Poetry for “In the Beginning God Created the Heaven and the Earth”
Creation is a crucial idea in LDS thought — we have shifted its meaning to suit a different cosmology, and its meaning remains in flux between the implications of our theology and what the rest of humanity understands. In LDS thought, not only is creation about using pre-existing materials (including us!) to create something new…
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CFM 12/8-12/14 (OD 1 &2, Articles of Faith): Poetry for “We Believe”
When I think about the phrase “We Believe”, I lean to thinking that the more important word is “We” instead of the traditional focus on “Believe”. And I think the history of the early Church in the 1830s supports this focus. Many members of the Church were decidedly anti-creedal; i.e., they were against having a…
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Cutting Edge Latter-day Saint Research, November 2025
Griffin, Brenton. “‘Neutral in Matters of Party Politics’?: The Uneasy Place of The Mormon Church within Commonwealth Politics.” The Journal of Imperial and Commonwealth History(2025): 1-15. This current debate historicises and scrutinises the claim of the Church of Jesus Christ of Latter-day Saints, more commonly known as the Mormon Church, in regards to its stance…
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CFM 12/1-12/7 (D&C 137-138): Poetry for “The Vision of the Redemption of the Dead”
A less-discussed principle of the gospel is the idea that it is universal—i.e, that the gospel and its blessings are available to all of God’s children, including those who are dead. The application of this belief leads to performing ordinances for the dead, a practice that is unique, as far as I know, among Christian…
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CFM 11/24-11/30 (D&C 135-136): Poetry for “ He “Has Sealed His Mission and His Works with His Own Blood”
Our feelings about Joseph Smith can often be conflicted. On one hand we revere him as the prophet of the restoration, who has “has done more, save Jesus only, for the salvation of men in this world, than any other man that ever lived.” But need to the use of the phrase “save Jesus only”…
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CFM 11/17-11/23 (D&C 133-134): Poetry for “Prepare Ye for the Coming of the Bridegroom”
It’s difficult to overestimate the importance of the second coming in the restoration. Early members of the Church thought it would come quickly, in just a few years. And they wrote and taught about that expectation. While it seems like the focus on the second coming has diminished over time, we still regularly preach and…
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Cutting Edge Latter-day Saint Research, September 2025
Gavin, Sherrie, and Jo Coghlan. “Mormon Barbie: A Critical Examination of the Male Gaze, Ideology, and Parallel Representations.” In The Barbie Phenomenon, Volume 1, pp. 131-141. Routledge, 2026.
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CFM 9/15-9/21 (D&C 102-105): Poetry for “After Much Tribulation … Cometh the Blessing”
I noticed this time through the Doctrine and Covenants how the idea of trials is a major theme of this book of scripture. And the sections in this week’s lesson are during one of the most challenging periods of trials in early church history, the first round of persecution in Missouri and the subsequent travel…
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CFM 7/28-8/3: Poetry for “The Power of Godliness”
If the priesthood is “The Power of Godliness,” and if we are to learn how to use that power, we should probably think a lot about what the word “power” means in this context. Most of the time power is associated with the ability to control things, often including people and usually by force. But…
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CFM 7/14-7/20: Poetry for “I Will Lead You Along”
The introduction of the ‘United Firm’ in 1832 was, I think, an attempt to provide needed structure to the Church and its members. Any organization provides roles for individuals and ways that those roles interact with each other and the outside world. As a result, the scriptures covered by this week’s Come Follow Me lesson…
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CFM 6/16-6/22: Poetry for “The Lord Requireth the Heart and a Willing Mind”
What does it mean to have a “willing mind”? My first thought is that it is somehow about our attitude, how we confront or approach problems. But despite the prevalence of ‘positive mental attitude’ sayings and motivational posters, most people act as if their emotional state is something beyond their control. We act like we…
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Monogamy is the Rule, Part 5: The Rule of One
In the previous two posts in this series, I discussed an 1886 dictated revelation from John Taylor. A related claim to this document that I am addressing here is that when fundamentalist Latter-day Saint groups began to become a religious movement in their own right during the 1910s and 1920s, the leadership of the majority…
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Cutting-Edge Latter-day Saint Research, April 2025
Bushman, Richard Lyman. “What Are We to Make of the Gold Plates?.” BYU Studies Quarterly 64, no. 1 (2025): 9.
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CFM 4/28-5/4: Poetry for “My Law to Govern My Church”
Organizations require structure. And the larger that an organization gets, the more structure it needs. That might seem pretty obvious in today’s world, but I suspect it was less obvious in the 1830s among the Saints who had joined the church, many because of the way other churches operated. After the ‘constitution’ of the Church…
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CFM 2/17-2/23: Poetry for “Upon You My Fellow Servants”
I sometimes think that when we consider the visit of John the Baptist to Joseph and Oliver (the main event discussed in this lesson), we focus on the restoration of the Aaronic Priesthood, but leave out the restoration of the ordinance of baptism. Yes, the ordinance can’t be performed without the priesthood, but then I…
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CFM 2/10-2/16: Poetry for “That You May Come Off Conqueror”
While the sections in this lesson address what to do after the loss of the 116 pages and what Hyrum Smith should do, elements of these sections and the lesson have a triumphalist element, pointing out that the Lord’s plans will not be thwarted because of opposition. However, this should not be read as some…
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Cutting-Edge Latter-day Saint Research, October 2024
Williams, Peter. “Detecting Semantic Differences between LDS and Christian Speech.” Schwa (2024).
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Book of Mormon Historicity, Part 3: Quiet
So I often think about life when I finally finish the book I’ve been working on for a long time. Probably a lot of questions and some unhappiness both from Orthodoxy and ex-Mormons. Both sides may be unhappy that I held such views while serving as bishop. That’s understandable. One point I wanted to address…
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Cutting-Edge Latter-day Saint Research, July 2024
Clarke, Steve. “When conspiracy theorists win.” Inquiry: An Interdisciplinary Journal of Philosophy (2024): 1-24.
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Does Humanity Deserve Hell?
Scene from Jonathan Edwards’ “Sinners in the Hands of an Angry God” I’m not much of a theologian. Some of this is part Joseph Smith saying that if you stared into heaven for five minutes you would know more than has ever been said on the subject, and some of it is Aquinas’ cryptic comment…
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My Religious-Themed Required Reading List, Part II
A Celestial Library One of the advantages of homeschooling is that you have the bandwidth to fine-tune your children’s reading and media diet on a level that would be very difficult to pull off if they were gone for half the day. I’ve read quite a bit in my day (although I’m not currently reading…