-
•
•
11 responses
One day while I was serving my mission, my companion told me that he knew the name of the Holy Ghost. I told him I was doubtful, but he insisted that it was Eden. He opened his scriptures to Doctrine and Covenants, Section 80, pointed to Eden Smith’s name, and told me to look at the footnote (2a). I did so and was surprised to see that it indicated that Eden Smith was indeed the Holy Ghost. I found this very confusing and worked on puzzling out this mystery for a minute or two before finally figuring out what was… Read More
-
•
•
8 responses
As I was working on my previous post, I had a thought I wanted to explore, but not enough space there: If we believe in eternal progression but also want to argue that there are limits to upward mobility in the eternities, we run into the question—why? Why wouldn’t it be possible to continue repenting and progressing after resurrection and judgement? While there’s a lot of potential answers (God said so, lower motivation to work on things in this life, etc.), one of the more interesting answers from Church leaders caught my attention as something to ponder. That answer was… Read More
-
•
•
14 responses
One of the methods that paleontologists use to understand the age of a fossil in relation to other fossils at a site is by looking at layers, or strata. The basic idea is that layers build up over time, with organisms becoming part of the sediment layers as the organisms die and get buried while the sediments continue to build up, then become fossilized over time. Since layers build upwards, older layers will generally be found lower in the strata levels, with the newer layers being superimposed on top. Thus, each layer provides a snapshot of what was living (and… Read More
-
•
•
4 responses
The experience of persecution in Missouri was not just recent history. For Hyde, it was the literal fulfillment of prophecy about the last days. Read More
-
•
•
Poetry for this week’s Come Follow Me lesson, D&C section 76, The Vision of the Celestial Kingdom — plus, was Joseph Smith a poet? Read More
-
•
•
5 responses
It can be easy at times, when studying the early history of the Church through the lens of the Doctrine and Covenants, to forget that there was a whole life and existence in the Church outside of the main gathering places in Ohio and Missouri. We spend so much time following Joseph Smith and his companions that the lives of those not immediately around him can fall by the wayside. Even when studying later periods, it can be easy to forget that there were times during the mid-1800s that the majority of Church members actually lived in Britain rather than… Read More
-
•
•
7 responses
Some years ago, I attended a course on the Pearl of Great Price at the Logan Institute that could have just as easily been entitled “Teachings of Hugh Nibley.” The teacher was well-versed in Nibley’s writings and frequently used them in discussing both the Book of Moses and the Book of Abraham. And, frankly, it made the class quite interesting to attend because of the insights the teacher shared from his reading of Hugh Nibley’s works. In part because of the things that Nibley wrote, he has garnered attention as a widely-known figure of the 20th century in the Church… Read More
-
•
•
22 responses
If you survey the damage left by Donald Trump and Covid-19 in our neighborhood of the American religious landscape, a sigh of relief is warranted. Read More
-
•
•
One response
Poetry for this week’s Come Follow Me lesson, D&C sections 71-75, addressing Criticism, Consecration and Proclamation Read More
-
•
•
Poetry for this week’s Come Follow Me lesson, D&C sections 67-70, addressing The Lord’s Witness, Inspiration, and Parenting Read More
-
•
•
2 responses
At this point in the year, we’ve finally caught back up with the context of where we began—Section 1. The conference in early November 1831 (at which Sections 1, 67 and 68 were recorded) was focused on publishing the revelations that Joseph Smith had been—a project which would come to be known as the Book of Commandments and later The Doctrine and Covenants. It is, perhaps, inevitable in a religious movement that believes in both being led by prophets and that everyone can receive revelation that there are going to be tensions about who is able to speak for the… Read More
-
•
•
4 responses
Orson Hyde, socialist? Read More
-
•
•
5 responses
Hyde touches on his own life and perspective for the first time. Read More
-
•
•
Poetry for this week’s Come Follow Me lesson, D&C sections 64-66, addressing Forgiveness, Zion’s Ensign and Our Thoughts Read More
-
•
•
5 responses
“The lack of any biography of Frank Cannon seemed a glaring gap in [Utah] annals. It was high time to tell his story.” Val Holley recently stated this during an interview with Kurt Manwaring where they discussed Frank Cannon and Holley’s recently-published biography, Frank J. Cannon: Saint, Senator, Scoundrel (University of Utah Press, 2021). What follows here is a co-post to that interview, with quotes and some commentary. Feel free to read the full interview here. In summarizing Frank Cannon’s accomplishments, Holley stated that: Frank Cannon was Utah’s first U.S. senator after it became a state in 1896. During the 50… Read More
-
•
•
Poetry for this week’s Come Follow Me lesson, D&C section 63, addressing rebelliousness and signs, but concluding that the Lord is in control Read More
-
•
•
13 responses
At some point in the near future, the Missionary Training Center will likely reopen fully, and in some ways that’s unfortunate, because home MTC is good. Read More
-
•
•
6 responses
Last night poet and author James Goldberg, current president of the Association for Mormon Letters (AML), gave a short but masterful Presidential address as part of the AML’s annual conference. His poetic style and urgent message is quite powerful, despite being just 12 minutes long. Please watch this and let me know what you think! I hope to post some thoughts during the week. Read More
-
•
•
Poetry for this week’s Come Follow Me lesson, D&C sections 60-62, addressing missionary work and the Lord’s support for us. Read More
-
•
•
9 responses
The following is Stephen Cranny’s third guest post here at Times & Seasons. Stephen Cranney is a Washington DC-based data scientist and Non-Resident Fellow at Baylor’s Institute for the Studies of Religion. He has produced over 20 peer-reviewed articles and five children. I was surprised at the Church’s seeming statement (I’ll discuss why it was “seeming” later), echoed around the standard General Conference post-game analysis that half the Church in the United States was single. The surprise came from the fact that self-response surveys on religion and marital status consistently show that a solid majority of adult Latter-day Saints are married.… Read More
-
•
•
The end is always a new beginning. The arrival of the first Latter-day Saints in Independence, Missouri was both an end and a beginning. They accomplished the goal of gathering to Zion, but then realized that now they had to actually build Zion—a process that has, in a variety of ways, continued ever since. For the Saints at that time, the revelations contained in D&C 58 and 59 show the process of realizing that the new beginning of Zion contained a new set of struggles, and struggles that were very different from what they expected. For us today, these sections… Read More
-
•
•
4 responses
The end of the world is a pretty dramatic scene. Perhaps it is because of that drama that the idea has captured the imagination of human beings for thousands of years and continues to do so today. It is not an uncommon topic of conversation among Latter-day Saints that I have known, including the occasional discussion of dreams or visions about the End Times. These types of discussions interested Christopher Blythe, who has “always had a deep interest in apocalypticism” and felt that “much of the scholarship on Latter-day Saint last days beliefs seem to focus on official doctrine rather… Read More
-
•
•
One response
By going in order through the Doctrine and Covenants, the Come Follow Me lessons sometimes show the concerns of the Church at a particular point in time. The seven sections included in this lesson are quite varied, but all demonstrate temporal concerns — where to put all the immigrants arriving in Kirtland, how members should share what they have, how should church members fulfill the command to gather to Missouri and who should be doing the printing of Church publications. But despite these temporal concerns, in these sections there are clearly spiritual lessons which are germane to the temporal needs… Read More
-
•
•
7 responses
It’s a well-known grammar joke that punctuation can save lives, since there is a difference between saying: “Let’s eat, Grandma!” and: “Let’s eat Grandma!” Punctuation and grammar do make a difference, as Oakhurst Dairy found out the hard way a few years ago. In a legal case about overtime for drivers and a state law in Maine, the debate centered on the grammar of the law, which required time-and-a-half pay for each hour worked after 40 hours, with exemptions for: The canning, processing, preserving, freezing, drying, marketing, storing, packing for shipment or distribution of: (1) Agricultural produce; (2) Meat and… Read More
-
•
•
3 responses
I think this is more about foot washing than I’ve ever read anywhere before. Read More
-
•
•
Poetry for this week’s Come Follow Me lesson, D&C sections 49-50, addressing marriage, identifying falsehood & edification through spiritual gifts. Read More
-
•
•
2 responses
I started listening to Carol Lynn Pearson read her latest poetry collection — Finding Mother God: Poems to Heal the World — and I could not stop. And now I’m listening to it a second time. It’s vibrant and healing. I find Pearson’s words in this volume (and, in the audiobook, her delivery) irresistible. Pearson eloquently, insightfully, and powerfully captures a longing for a closer connection to a Heavenly Mother—and the promise of what that connection may bring—throughout, “so that God Herself and God Himself, who were always one, can join on earth to bless the confused billions” (from “Message… Read More
-
•
•
9 responses
I served my mission in the Midwestern United States, and we had a decent amount of contact with groups, such as the Pentecostals, who were enthusiastic about charismatic gifts of the Spirit. I remember on one occasion, that a missionary serving in the same district approached me about an investigator they she been working with who believed that speaking in tongues (in the sense of spouting out what sounded like gibberish while under the power of the Holy Spirit) was a very important part of Christianity and a sign that God was involved in a Church. The missionary, on the… Read More
-
•
•
Poetry for this week’s Come Follow Me lesson, D&C sections 46-48, addressing being welcoming, spiritual gifts, keeping a history and sharing the lands we own. Read More
-
•
•
5 responses
Was I comfortable with the topic? the prospective client on the other end of the video call wanted to know. Read More