Podcasts about golden plates

Vancouver: a city known for it's sushi, and near the top of that list is MINAMI. Or is it? We kick off apostrophe-two-five with a visit to Minami to see for ourselves if Yaletown's finest sushi experience can live up to years of Golden Plates, VanMag awards and Michelin Guides. Also featured: Our fun food predictions for 2025, Jill's beautiful honeymoon dining in Peru, and Brian's great experience at the recently opened Sumibiyaki Arashi.Don't forget to rate, review, subscribe and tell friends about the show! Follow our socials:InstagramTwitter

Joseph Smith's discovery of a set of buried golden plates was the beginning of the Mormons or Church of Latter Day Saints. This was also moment deeply ensconced in folk belief and magic. Treasure-digging, seer stones, and magical parchments were all part of the Smith family tradition and they each played a part in the story of Moroni's Golden Plates.

In this first of three parts that nobody asked for, Maggie tells the story of Church of Jesus Christ of Latter-day Saints founder Joseph Smith's early life, career as a treasure hunter, and the mystery of The Golden Plates. Join our Patreon at patreon.com/mysteryteaminc Follow along on instagram for updates @mysteryteaminc Intro Song by Sunday Cruise

This week Magnum & Izzo discuss the radical and controversial life of Joseph Smith, the founder of Mormonism. What say you? What say you? EPISODE 135 OF THE SWERVE PODCAST ↩️ LISTEN NEXT

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A Heavy Debate: The Weight of the Golden Plates and Historical Accuracy

Details of how and why Joseph Smith, with Emma, went to the hill (not yet known as Cumorah) just after midnight, September 22, 1827, to acquire the golden plates.  Descriptions of the dimensions of the golden plates, and how much they weighed, from those who picked them up.  How Joseph Smith began to translate.  Why Martin Harris decided to take a few lines of characters copied from the plates, with a translation, to Columbia Professor Charles Anthon and Samuel Mitchell.  Why were there contradicting stories from Anthon, Mitchell and Harris.

On this episode of Mormonish Podcast Rebecca and Landon are joined by the wonderful John Lundwall to discuss the shocking discovery of golden plates in Saudi Arabia by Dr. Miles Jones. The discovery was revealed on the Shabbatt Night Live podcast and then picked up by faithful podcasts like The Stick of Joseph and David Alexander.This discovery has raised many more questions than it answers and Dr. John is here to cut through the confusion and help us understand the facts. ***How to DONATE to Mormonish Podcast: If you would like to help financially support our podcast, you can DONATE to support Mormonish Podcast here:https://www.mormonishpodcast.org/support Also at: PayPal: https://paypal.me/BiblioTechMedia?cou...Venmo: @BiblioTechMedia ****WE HAVE MERCH! **** If you'd like to purchase Mormonish Merch, you can visit our Merch store here: https://www.etsy.com/shop/mormonishmerch We appreciate our Mormonish viewers and listeners so much!Don't forget to LIKE and SUBSCRIBE to Mormonish Podcast! Contact Mormonish Podcast: mormonishpodcast@gmail.com

Scholars date Moses life, his receipt of the Ten Commandments and construction of the Ark of the Covenant, to between 1,500 BCE and 750 BCE.  The Ark was about 4 feet long, 2 1/2 feet wide and 2 1/2 feet tall.  It held the 10 Commendments written by God on a stone tablet, Goliath's sword David used to cut his head off, and, according to some sources, the Urim & Thummim.  Moroni's stone box held the Golden Plates, Laban's sword Nephi used to cut his heaf off, and the Nephite Interpreters.  The Ark's main purposes were to hold the 10 Commandments, and, according to the Bible, provide a suitable place for YHWH (Jehovah) God appeared to Moses and others (immediately above the Ark).  In this episode of Religion Today, host Martin Tanner give additional details about the Ark, and different theories about what happened to it.

BIG THANKS TO THIS EPISODE'S SPONSORS: The Hockey Podcast Network, Draft Kings, The Hub Tavern, Monterey Cafe, Draft Kings Sports book, and Fire Chief John Miller. In this episode of the Dusty Bender Podcast, the guys cover the Hockey Canada investigation, Patrick Roy joining the Islanders, The Salt Lake City expansion announcement, Petr Mrazek gets himself a nice deal, and the Edmonton McDavid's have won some games. Keep an eye out for our Seattle Kraken-centric Sunday Episode! Twitter: @DBHockeyPod Facebook: facebook.com/DBPOD Call (800) 327-5050 or visit gamblinghelplinema.org (MA), Gambling Problem? Call 877- 8-HOPENY/text HOPENY (467369) (NY). If you or someone you know has a gambling problem, crisis counseling and referral services can be accessed by calling 1-800-GAMBLER (1-800-426-2537) (CO/IL/IN/LA/MD/MI/NJ/OH/PA/TN/WV/WY), 1-800-NEXT STEP (AZ), 1-800-522-4700 (KS/NH), 888-789-7777/visit ccpg.org (CT), 1-800-BETS OFF (IA), visit OPGR.org (OR), or 1-888-532-3500 (VA). 21+ (18+ NH/WY). Physically present in AZ/CO/CT/IL/IN/IA/KS/LA(select parishes)/MA/MD/MI /NH /NJ/ NY/OH/OR/PA/TN/VA/WV/WY only. VOID IN ONT. Eligibility restrictions apply. Bonus bets (void in MA/NH/OR): Valid 1 per new customer. Min. $5 deposit. Min $5 pre-game moneyline bet. Bet must win. $150 issued as six (6) $25 bonus bets. Bonus Bets are non-cashable and cannot be withdrawn. Bonus bets must be wagered 1x and stake is not included in any returns or winnings. Bonus Bets expire 7 days (168 hours) after being awarded. Promotional offer period ends 5/28/23 at 11:59PM ET. See terms at sportsbook.draftkings.com/basketballterms. Learn more about your ad choices. Visit megaphone.fm/adchoices

One of the most contentious issues of 19th Century Christian America revolved around the veracity of the story of Joseph Smith and his discovery of golden plates that became the foundation of the Book of Mormon. In these episodes we speak with Prof. Richard Bushman, whose book on this subject is perhaps the most detailed on the subject you'd want to see.. What piqued my interest is that while Dr. Bushman is a practicing Mormon, his academic credentials are impeccable. And he retired from Columbia University. This is interesting because so many academicians in the field of Religious Studies are actually quite secular. Above & beyond the main focus of our conversation, I question him on what it's like to be a believer in a conservative religion in the midst of the liberal landscape of college campus. Listen to what he says.

This week we pick up in part two of our conversation with author and missionary to Latter-Day Saints Bill McKeever. Bill continues to share with the Watchman Fellowship 2023 mission team to Utah more difficulties about the official LDS Church accounts of the gold plates as well as some historical and textual difficulties with the LDS Book of Abraham. Bill McKeever founded Mormonism Research Ministry in 1979 with the hope of informing the Body of Christ about the differences between Mormonism and Christianity. He has also made an effort to reach out the many individuals who are members of the LDS Church, desiring to show them in gentleness and respect the truth about God's Word. His writings include In Their own Words: A Collection of Mormon Quotations (Morris Publishing, 2010), Answering Mormons' Questions: Ready Responses for Inquiring Latter-day Saints (co-authored with Eric Johnson, Kregel, 2013), and Mormonism 101: Examining the Religion of the Latter-day Saints (Baker, 2015). Related Links: Free links to some of our most popular podcasts on Mormonism, access to some of our key LDS articles and our free, 4-page Watchman Fellowship Profile on the Church of Jesus Christ of Latter-day Saints: Watchman Fellowship articles on Mormonism: watchman.org/LDS Watchman Fellowship Profile on the Church of Jesus Christ of Latter-day Saints: watchman.org/Mormonism Bill McKeever's ministry - Mormonism Research Ministry: MRM.org Apologetics Profile podcast What Is the Gospel? with Mormon apologist Scott Gordon and Christian apologist James Walker (YouTube):  watchman.org/GordonWalker  Apologetics Profile podcast "Jesus' Resurrection and Joseph's Visions," with Rob Bowman: watchman.org/1stVision Additional ResourcesFREE: We are also offering a subscription to our 4-page bimonthly Profiles here: www.watchman.org/Free.PROFILE NOTEBOOK: Order the complete collection of Watchman Fellowship Profiles (over 600 pages -- from Astrology to Zen Buddhism) in either printed or PDF formats here: watchman.org/notebook. SUPPORT: Help us create more content like this. Make a tax-deductible donation here: www.watchman.org/give.Apologetics Profile is a ministry of Watchman Fellowship For more information, visit www.watchman.org © Watchman Fellowship, Inc.

The Church of Jesus Christ of Latter-Day Saints is founded upon the Book of Mormon. But from where did the Book of Mormon originate? According to Joseph Smith, the founder of the LDS Church, the Book of Mormon comes from sacred gold plates he uncovered in 1827 near his home in Manchester, New York. What were these plates? How did Smith obtain them? How did he bring them back to his home? Where are they now? Find out this week and next as the Watchman Fellowship 2023 mission team to Utah sat down with author and missionary to LDS, Bill McKeever, of Mormon Research Ministry (mrm.org) to discuss these and other questions. Bill shares with us the history and stories behind the gold plates.Bill McKeever founded Mormonism Research Ministry in 1979 with the hope of informing the Body of Christ about the differences between Mormonism and Christianity. He has also made an effort to reach out the many individuals who are members of the LDS Church, desiring to show them in gentleness and respect the truth about God's Word. His writings include In Their own Words: A Collection of Mormon Quotations (Morris Publishing, 2010), Answering Mormons' Questions: Ready Responses for Inquiring Latter-day Saints (co-authored with Eric Johnson, Kregel, 2013), and Mormonism 101: Examining the Religion of the Latter-day Saints (Baker, 2015). Related Links: Free links to some of our most popular podcasts on Mormonism, access to some of our key LDS articles and our free, 4-page Watchman Fellowship Profile on the Church of Jesus Christ of Latter-day Saints: Watchman Fellowship articles on Mormonism: watchman.org/LDS Watchman Fellowship Profile on the Church of Jesus Christ of Latter-day Saints: watchman.org/Mormonism Bill McKeever's ministry - Mormonism Research Ministry: MRM.org Apologetics Profile podcast What Is the Gospel? with Mormon apologist Scott Gordon and Christian apologist James Walker (YouTube):  watchman.org/GordonWalker  Apologetics Profile podcast "Jesus' Resurrection and Joseph's Visions," with Rob Bowman: watchman.org/1stVision Additional ResourcesFREE: We are also offering a subscription to our 4-page bimonthly Profiles here: www.watchman.org/Free.PROFILE NOTEBOOK: Order the complete collection of Watchman Fellowship Profiles (over 600 pages -- from Astrology to Zen Buddhism) in either printed or PDF formats here: watchman.org/notebook. SUPPORT: Help us create more content like this. Make a tax-deductible donation here: www.watchman.org/give.Apologetics Profile is a ministry of Watchman Fellowship For more information, visit www.watchman.org © Watchman Fellowship, Inc.

We welcome Tanner McAlister today as we discuss two articles on the translation of the Book of Mormon.  We kick things off using our season's reference, “Yet to be revealed”, from BYU studies.  Grant Hardy's article “The Book of Mormon Translation Process”, provides an excellent discussion of possible problems and resolutions in the translation of the Book of Mormon.  Then Tanner, a scholar of Tibetan Buddhism, walks us through his recent work, “The Production of the Book of Mormon in Light of a Tibetan Buddhist Parallel”, published in Dialogue, which draws parallels between the discovery and “translation” of both a class of ancient Tibetan Buddhist scripture and the Book of Mormon.  Join us! Link to our Face in Hat discord server! https://discord.gg/MnSMvKHvwh Dialogue Podcast Network https://www.dialoguejournal.com/podcasts/ The Book of Mormon Translation Process, by Grant Hardy https://byustudies.byu.edu/article/the-book-of-mormon-translation-process/ The Production of the Book of Mormon in Light of a Tibetan Buddhist Parallel, by Tanner Davidson McAlister https://www.dialoguejournal.com/articles/the-production-of-the-book-of-mormon-in-light-of-a-tibetan-buddhist-parallel/ The full issue: Yet to be revealed, open questions in Latter-Day Saint theology. Edited by Eric A. Eliason and Terryl L. Givens https://byustudies.byu.edu/journal/60-3/ Understanding the Book of Mormon: A Reader's Guide, by Grant Hardy https://www.amazon.com/Understanding-Book-Mormon-Readers-Guide/dp/0199731705 Kathleen Flake, “Translating Time: The Nature and Function of Joseph Smith's Narrative Canon,” Journal of Religion 87, no. 4 (2007): 497–527 https://www.jstor.org/stable/10.1086/519770 Jared Hickman, “‘Bringing Forth' the Book of Mormon,” in MacKay, Ashurst-McGee, and Hauglid, Producing Ancient Scripture, 78–80. Blake T. Ostler, “The Book of Mormon as a Modern Expansion of an Ancient Source,” Dialogue 20, no. 1 (1987): 66–123 https://www.dialoguejournal.com/wp-content/uploads/sbi/articles/Dialogue_V20N01_68.pdf James Gentry, “Power Objects” (Leiden: Brill, 2017) https://brill.com/downloadpdf/book/9789004335042/B9789004335042_001.pdf Rosalynde Welch, “The New Mormon Theology of Matter,” Mormon Studies Review 4, no. 1 (2017): 70. https://scholarsarchive.byu.edu/cgi/viewcontent.cgi?article=1077&context=msr2 Longchenpa and the Possession of the Dakinis, from Tantra in Practice, by David Germano and Janet Gyatso https://www.degruyter.com/document/doi/10.1515/9780691190457-020/html?lang=en

Host Martin Tanner explains why the words "Jesus" "Messiah" "Baptism" and "Bible" are not anachronisms and are perfectly fine translations of the ancient words on the Golden Plates from which the Book of Mormon was translated. A translation is rendering a word or phrase and its their meaning in one language, into a word or phrase in another language, which carries the same meaning, as much as possible. Since Christians believe "Jesus" was the God of the Old Testament, the word "Bible" properly conveys the idea of authoritative religious writings, even pre-Christian ones, and "Baptism" properly conveys the pre-Christian idea of ritual cleansing of sin by immersion in water, these are all proper words to find in the pre-Christian parts of Book of Mormon.See omnystudio.com/listener for privacy information.

What were the Golden Plates made of? Probably not 100% gold, because that would be too heavy. Could it have been a copper alloy? Jerry Grover gives more info as he attempts to translate the Caracters Document. Check out our conversation.... https://youtu.be/CL2JQ-tfqKU transcript to follow Copyright © 2023 Gospel Tangents All Rights Reserved Except for book reviews, no content may be reproduced without written permission transcript to follow Copyright © 2023 Gospel Tangents All Rights Reserved Except for book reviews, no content may be reproduced without written permission

Mauricio Berger of Brazil claims the Angel Moroni appeared to him in 2007.  Berger also claims he has translated part of the "sealed portion" of the Golden Plates from which the Book of Mormon was translated by Joseph Smith. After reading Berger's purported translation, Religion Today host Martin Tanner concludes this is a poor hoax. Berger's description of the physical description of the sealed portion of the Golden Plates contradicts the description of Joseph Smith and the three and eight witnesses.  Also, the content of Berger's bogus translation contradicts what the Book of Mormon describes in the Book of Ether.  Also, two of Berger's witnesses to the angel and Golden Plates have recanted.  Hear the details in this episode of Religion Today.See omnystudio.com/listener for privacy information.

What if we told you that Joseph Smith's Golden Plates weren't the only ancient record found in the ground? And what if we told you there were plates that you could see with your own eyes, right now? Follow us @DrunkMormonPod PLUS, visit our Merch Store during our holiday sale! And find us on Patreon!

0 (0s): Morning. Good morning. Please 1 (2s): Come find a seat and, And please stand as we get ready to worship the Lord this morning. Before we get going, I'd like to share a scripture in a moment. Thank you. Revelation one, eight says, I am the alpha in the omega, says the Lord God. Who is and who was and who is to come The Almighty. It just speaks to the magnitude of God. He was before He is now and he will forever be. And that's what we're gonna sing about this morning. So let's just prepare our hearts to worship the Lord this morning. 1 (43s): He is so amazing and worthy of our praise. 0 (60s): We worship the God who was we worship the God who is we worship the God who evermore will be. He opened the prison doors. He parted the raging sea. My God, He holds the big story. Join the house of the Lord. Join the house of the Lord today and we won't we shout your praise. Join the house of the Lord our God is in and we won't be crying. 0 (1m 43s): We shout out your praise. We sing to the God who heals. We sing to the God who saves. We sing to the God who always makes away cause he hung up on that cross and he rose up from that grave. My God, still rolling stones away of the there's house of the Lord. 0 (2m 24s): And we won't. We shout your praise. There's the Lord. We shout and we were the backers and now we're royalty. And we were the prisoners. And now we're running free. We are forgiven. Accepted redeem by his grace. Let the house of the Lord sing. 0 (3m 4s): Praise. We were the now we're royalty. We were the praise. Now we are forgive reads in by his grace. Let the house of the Lord sing praise, Sing next joy. There's joy in the house of the Lord. There's joy in the house of the Lord today. And we will be quiet. We shout out your praise. There's of Lord our godly in this place. 0 (3m 47s): We won't. We shout praise. There's joy, the of Lord. We won. Be we shout face. 0 (4m 38s): Let's sing a 1 (4m 39s): Jesus. If you're excited about Jesus this morning, can you just shout his name? 0 (4m 44s): Jesus. We're not 1 (4m 46s): Ashamed in this place tonight, this morning. We're not ashamed to praise Jesus this morning. 0 (4m 54s): He is our Lord. 1 (4m 55s): He's our Savior. 0 (4m 57s): And 1 (4m 58s): We worship him. We worship you Jesus. Thank you Lord. 0 (5m 21s): When Christ is my foundation, rock, which I stand with everything around then I booed my faith in Jesus. He's never let me down his faithful. So I would he fail now He, He. 0 (6m 9s): I've still got. I've got peace that makes no sense. So I'm not held by own 2 (6m 27s): Feel. 0 (6m 29s): Jesus. He 2 (6m 36s): Faithful 0 (6m 37s): Every season. So when Blue, my house was built on you, I'm safe with you. 0 (8m 51s): I'm gonna make it through. Ray came blew, my house was built on you. I'm with you. I'm going make it through. Hey win. My house was built on. 0 (9m 37s): Was built on. Cade stand is strong on with everything around me is I've never been more black. 0 (10m 24s): I put faith Jesus, he won't. Won't, he won't. 0 (11m 17s): No he won't. 1 (11m 44s): Church, we're just gonna rest for a moment. 0 (11m 48s): We're 1 (11m 48s): Gonna rest in that church. I mean in that, in that truth, 0 (11m 51s): That 1 (11m 52s): He's not gonna fail us. Doesn't matter what we can do. Doesn't matter how far we go. He's the rock on which we stand. I wanna invite those. If you feel led by the Holy Spirit to bring a word or speak out something encouraging that God has put on your heart as you feel led. Let's do that right now as we continue to worship. 3 (12m 33s): When our eyes are set upon the Lord, peace just comes overflowing beyond our understanding and praise. This world is such a chaos, a spiral downhill faith. The to us down Christ, Jesus, God, peace, the rock I stand all otherness sinking sand. 2 (13m 14s): Jesus 3 (13m 14s): Name. Amen. 4 (13m 24s): Father, we thank you that this is your universe and you will do what you're gonna do. And you've written it all down for us, Lord. And we have no need to be afraid or fear be seen, our country even falling apart from the top And the things going on in the world. Wicked or wickedness. And yet you are in control. And Father, you said in the last days will be a great falling away. And we don't want to be those people, Lord. We need to just remain focused and stand whatever currently said in 1924, fear not. These things must be. 4 (14m 5s): And so Father, that's my friend today, that we as your body here, Lord, we will stand, we will be focused, we will trust you. Whatever the wave bring. Lord, we stand upon the rock. We thank you that foundation you always have been and you always, Jesus 5 (14m 31s): One night, brains do not be terrified. You 6 (15m 42s): Sing that again. Let's all to you, Hi all to you my hiding please the place, the king and this thing because vehicle, deal 2 (17m 36s): With me, 6 (17m 41s): Car deal 2 (17m 43s): With me, 6 (17m 48s): Car deal with 2 (17m 50s): Me. 6 (17m 54s): How will 2 (17m 55s): Not 6 (18m 8s): Hoo 2 (18m 29s): My 6 (19m 21s): I will to you? I think, 7 (19m 55s): Lord, we praise you Jesus. You are so good Lord. We know that you're here in our midst, Jesus, where two or three are gathered, you are there in their midst, Lord. So you're here right now. Lord, we thank you that you're the friend that sticks closer than a brother. We thank you Jesus for all the things that you are. Lord. You are so great and so amazing. Lord, I just pray that every heart would, would come to you in humility today. Lord, you give you, you give grace to the humble Lord. 7 (20m 40s): You resist the proud, but you give grace to the humble Lord. So Jesus, I just pray that each heart would come to you in humility today. Lord, we're all coming on common ground. We're all sinners in need of a savior Jesus. And so we are so grateful for that savior that you are, Lord, we come to you with hearts of contrition, with with humility, Lord. And we just ask for you to move in our midst. Lord, we ask for you to do your will today. Lord, we just worship you for who you are and for nothing else. Lord, we lift up your name in this place, Lord. And and and it's in your name we pray. Amen. Amen. All right, you can take your seats if you'd like. Thank you worship team. Thank you Jesus for being here. 7 (21m 21s): Can't do it without em. Wouldn't want to. Alright, so just wanna welcome you here today. My name's Curtis. If you're new here, there is coffee out on the patio there and there are restrooms down these hallways. You can follow the signs also. We've got an info center at the back. And if you need to sign up for anything, want to get further connected to the church, just want to meet a friendly face, you can head back to the info center. We'd be glad to welcome you there. Also, we've got a couple of great things coming up. One of those is a worship and prayer morning that we're starting. It's gonna be at 8:00 AM on Tuesday. And this hopefully will turn into a monthly thing. 7 (22m 1s): We're, we're trying it out once and seeing how it goes. But the goal of having a 8:00 AM is the hope that you can come before work or before you drop the kids off at the school and just come and worship the Lord in prayer and just start your week off in that way. It's gonna be really beautiful, an amazing time. It's gonna be right here, 8:00 AM on Tuesday. The next thing is, if you have a child that hasn't been dedicated to the Lord, we're doing baby dedications on October 23rd. So if you wanna sign up, you can head back to the info center. Just a great way to dedicate your child and just say, Hey, I wanna raise this child in the house of the Lord. We want to raise this child as a Jesus follower. 7 (22m 43s): And it's also, it's kind of more for the parents to like commit their lives. Like, Okay, I'm gonna raise this child for the Lord. And, and so kind of doing that in public saying, Hey, you guys can all keep me accountable. So it's really good. So we encourage you to do that. Also, pastor appreciation is next Sunday. It's just gonna be a great way to honor our leaders and our pastors. So if you would like to bring a little gift for them or a card or something, you can do that and drop it off at the info center. Some people already did that this week and they get extra credit. So yeah, they did great. But yeah, if you wanna bring a gift next week, you're welcome to. 7 (23m 22s): And then the last thing is that we've got another outreach coming up and it's for Halloween in the village. And we don't love the, the event of Halloween or the holiday of Halloween, but, but we do want to take advantage of all the kids coming by. It's a great, great way for us to reach out to people, have a positive impact in their lives. And so we're gonna be clearing out all the, the chairs in here and making like a mini carnival in here. And then just be welcoming kids to come in, have a great time. We're gonna give 'em, load 'em up with candy. It's gonna be super fun. So it's, yeah, it's gonna be great. So kids are gonna be walking by and we're gonna be, you know, just loving on 'em. 7 (24m 2s): And so if you want to be involved with that, it's gonna take a lot of manpower to do that. So please sign up at the info center if you wanna serve at that event. So with that, we're gonna have a minute mingle time where you can hang out and talk to people and we'll be back in about a minute. So thanks so much. 8 (24m 23s): I need to, I've been taking almost a z pressing the boundaries, fighting off these feelings that pressing the drown. I get what I want, but I don't be what I need. 2 (25m 1s): Oh, 8 (25m 2s): My friends are changing. Maybe I was lost, but maybe I'm bound to be, all my friends are changing from maybe count the cost or maybe don't learn from me. Life is what happens in the between. I just want be waking dream. I don't need to just means, I just want, I just want be awake. Dream. Dream. 8 (25m 45s): Always lose the you. Maybe the, the maybe time. The maybe start the 10 (27m 23s): This down guy up here. I'm moving my lips but nothing's coming out and he's freaking out back there. It's probably not a good idea to mess with the sound people, but it is fun. Oh, come on. I knew I had a feeling that was coming. Kudos. Touche. Good job. I would've been bummed if you didn't catch that opportunity there. Good morning. How was everyone? Hey, we're in our identity series. How many do you remember what our identity series is all about? So last week we talked about our core values. Core values, right? No cheating. 10 (28m 3s): Close up your notes from your memory. What was the first core value that we talked about last week? 9 (28m 13s): Lordship. 10 (28m 14s): But what? The whole thing. 9 (28m 17s): The 10 (28m 17s): Lordship. Jesus. What is it? Did you, what is it? Confident 9 (28m 21s): In the 10 (28m 21s): Lordship of Jesus. Confident in the Lordship of Jesus Christ. What's the second one this week? 9 (28m 26s): Committed 10 (28m 27s): Or confident? Yeah, you're throwing me off. You're committed. Yeah. That was a test, right? We got 'em. What is it committed to? The lordship of Jesus Christ. I knew it didn't sound right. Committed. What's number two? 9 (28m 37s): Confident in the word. 10 (28m 39s): Confident. Confident in the word of God. What's number three? Sheila, You should know these. Come on. We've been talking about 'em for weeks here. What is it? All right, what's the other one? Got another good, good, good. And what, what's our mission statement or purpose statement? What is, it's a focus here. Okay. It's all right on the screen out or it's right on the, the sign out there. So it says Jesus 9 (29m 8s): To the 10 (29m 9s): Community, right? What Taking 9 (29m 11s): Jesus 10 (29m 12s): Out to the community. That's, that's it a nutshell. What I do in a nutshell. Oh, it's okay. Good, good, good. Impacting our community. So it's a big word. Impacting intentional, right? Impacting our community and our world with life changing message of Jesus Christ. That's what we're all about. So we're talking about core values and purpose statement. Mission statement. Because the core values are kind of what we kind of roll forward on. And as we understand our core values, we decide on ministries direction. We remember our purpose through those things. And so that's what we're gonna be talking about for the next few weeks. The rest of our core values, and then our mission statement. Then we'll kind of unpack a little bit what we believe kind of. 10 (29m 55s): We don't have time to talk about everything that we believe, but we talk about that every week. So with that, Lord, we just invite your presence. We thank you, God, that you are here and that, and when we gather, we gather in your name and you promise that we're, we gather two or three, gather in your name that you are there, Lord God. So we love you. We thank you Jesus for who you are and for what you're doing. Speak to us. Teach us we pray. Jesus name. Amen. Amen. Confident in the word of God. We'll be in Psalm one 19. We'll be going through about the first 20 verses or so. First service. I didn't get through the last point, so probably will not get through it, this service either. So, but I'll, I'll share that last point with you. 10 (30m 34s): Psalm 1 19, 1 0 5 says, Your word is a lamp and to my feet and a light into my path. And so we can find confidence in God's word because it actually lights up our feet and our path so we can move forward in wisdom with clarity, with confidence, with joy, and with peace. We know how to move forward because God's word is there to instruct us, to direct us. And it says that it actually illuminates lights up our path. So we've got this garden in our, in our in front of our house. It's called the secret garden. And it's super dark at night. And so over the years we've put in more and more solar lights and there's sensor lights. 10 (31m 18s): And so when you walk through the garden just starts lighting up. And so, you know, like when a coyote's out there or a stray cat or straight dog or or a stray person out there, we know when somebody's in the garden cuz everything's beginning to light up. And so we're like, hey, somebody must be in the garden. And so the word of God is like that. It just kind of illuminates it's light. It's it's light for our path so that we can kind of get clarity about moving forward. So I dunno about you, but how, how many have been reading the Bible for a year? How many have been reading the Bible for five years? 10 years, 20 years, 30 years. 10 (32m 1s): Rich here. Just keep your hand up. 40 years, 50 years. Harrison, you're old. 60 years. 60 years. Holy cow. 60 years Harrison's. Anybody older than Harrison's. Oh what about 70 years? So, well, right around there. I wonder, as you guys have read the Bible for decades, do you always get stuff out of it? Yes. Always. Yeah. Okay, good. So like, like you've read the same thing over and over again. Do you ever get stuff out of it at this? Like in your, Richard, I'll keep it to you in this ancient stage of life that you're in, you're still getting, you're still getting, you're still gleaning stuff All the time. 10 (32m 44s): All the time. Yeah. That's great. No, that's cool. Cool. Hey, there's a, a gold mine in Australia and they've been mining gold out of this gold mine for close to 50 years. And about 45 years into this gold mining, they, the miners discovered the biggest rocks of gold that they've ever discovered. 45 years of mining. They're pulling gold outta this place all the time. 45 years later they're getting like hundred plus pound boulders of gold worth millions of dollars. I I love this story because it communicates the value of continuing to mind truth out of God's word. Cuz I bet, I bet the longer we're doing it, the more gold we're gonna be able to mine. 10 (33m 28s): Out of that, we've got greater understanding and who, who knows if we quit early, if we're gonna miss out on those major big boulders of gold that God has for us. And so the encouragement is to remain confident in God's word, to continue to open it up all the time. And then just see what God will do with questions that you might have, concerns that you might have, fears that you might have. God has a way of revealing truth to our lives. This is not on the screen, but in Psalm 12, 6, 12 6 it says, And the words of the Lord are flawless, like silver purified and a crucible like gold refined seven times. 10 (34m 13s): So this, the word of God that we're talking about today, the Bible, what we're talking about today, has great, great value so that we think about the, the word of God, we need to understand well what is, what is the word of God? And and why do we have such confidence in the word well taken from an article titled, Why Do we Believe the Bible is Actually the Word of God by Dr. Jim Dennison, PhD. He said, Well, the Bible claims to be the word of God, but this fact does not settle the issue for us because the Quran claims to be the word of aah. 10 (34m 54s): The Book of Mormon claims to be the revelation of God. The writers of the Bible were convinced that what they wrote were inspired, they were spoken, breathed by the living God. The Apostle Paul was convinced that, well all scriptures God breathed and is useful for teaching rebuking, correcting and training in righteousness. Second to Timothy three 16, what scripture, What verse what? What part of the Bible was he talking about? Referring? Well, in the first entry, all they had was the Old Testament. So he's saying the Old Testament books of the Bible that scriptures God breath in is useful for teaching rebuking, correcting and training in righteousness. 10 (35m 39s): Jesus believed his words to be divinely inspired. In fact, he said, Heaven and earth will pass away, but my words will never pass away. His words will never pass away because they're divinely inspired as the eternal wisdom and word of God. And so having an earthquake passed away, but the words of Jesus will never pass away. Speaking of the totality of biblical revelation, the writer to the Hebrews claims the word of God is living and active. Have you experienced that? Like not in a creepy way like it's alive, but but like it's alive. Like it's got the capacity to speak to us, right? 10 (36m 22s): In our season, right in this moment, right where we live, right where we struggle, God's word has a way of speaking to us because it's what's living in active sharper than any double edged sword. It penetrates even to dividing soul and spirit, joints and marrow. It judges the thoughts and it attitudes of the heart. Hebrews for the word of God is powerful, right? J Packer said the Bible is God preaching. So like God speaking, communicating truth to us. That's what the Bible is. It's God preaching to us to bring us into new life with him. 10 (37m 3s): Augustine described it as love letters from home. So it's just this powerful revelation that we have in the 66 books of the Bible and the pages of scripture. We've got this powerful truth that God has given to us. So there's strong evidential reasons to believe the Bible's God's word, but the best test comes from, well from personal experience. So the challenge to us is, hey, try living the Bible. Try what does it mean to live the Bible? Like read it and do it. Read it and obey it. Read it and do what it tells you to do. Living the Bible will give you the best possible experience and opportunity to realize that it is alive and it's active and it's sharp and it's it, it brings about what we need in every season of life. 10 (37m 55s): Except it's savior as your savior. So don't just read about the savior of the world, but make Jesus your savior and just see what God will do in your life. Over and over again, throughout history, people have tried to disprove the scripture. And a lot of times when people are reading and studying and investigating the scripture, they become converted. They don't disprove it, but they become converted in their, in their lives. They, they accept the Lord Jesus Christ make its principles, it's guideposts the guiding direction for your life. So we're talking a lot about the Bible and Christianity, but what about, what about other beliefs? 10 (38m 41s): What about other religious systems? I mean, can't we all just like get along, aren't we after all of the same things, don't we believe basically the same thing? I see this bumper sticker all the time on people's cars and as I sit there, I'm studying the different religious symbols and I realize we're also different. So can we all get along? Absolutely, we can all get along, but we certainly do not agree. 10 (39m 26s): We certainly do not agree. Conventional wisdom these days debates or dictates that the various religions are just different roads up the same mountain, kind of like all roads lead to Rome. We're all on the same path. And so that's what conventional wisdom would tell us. They say it doesn't matter which God you trust because they are all the same. Different name, same God. People say things like this, Ala is Jehovah and Buddhist and Hindus seek the same God that we worship. People also say different holy books are simply religious. Well, they're simply religious diaries. And who's to say that your diary is right and mine is wrong? 10 (40m 11s): Such an approach to world religions and their writings feels, it feels tolerant and even hopeful on some level it feels like, boy, we can all gather around and sing kumbaya together and be one big happy family. So there's that warm kind of fuzzy as we think about possibly all getting along. But is it true? Is it possible? Is that a reality that we can all gather no matter what we choose to believe in, sing kumbaya together? Is it true? Do other religions agree? Do they agree with this characterization of their faith commitment? 10 (40m 55s): In a word? No. In a word they do not agree. Buddhist beliefs. Buddha taught that there is no God despite the fact that a lot of his followers worship him. He instructed his disciples to avoid all material desires that they might cease their suffering. Hindu beliefs. Hindus believe in thousands of territorial deities. But no, no Lord of the universe. Brahman is the divine force that sustains the universe not a personal God to be worshiped Muslim beliefs. 10 (41m 41s): Muslims believe that ala the Arabic word for God is the one supreme ruler of the universe. That Jesus was a prophet but not the divine son of God. And that salvation comes through obedience to theran. This book is all as self revelation through his prophet Mohamed. They believe all other, they believe all other. They believe all other holy books are inferior to it for its pages, Its pages alone contained the very word of God. Can't we all just get along? No one thinks we could all just kind of get along Jewish beliefs. 10 (42m 21s): Jews believe that Yahweh revealed himself through the laws and the prophets of their scriptures. And I would agree, but they also believe that Jesus was was not the Messiah. That the New Testament is not the word of God. They base their hope of heaven on the mercy of God in response to their lives of obedience and morality. Mormon beliefs, Mormons believe that God revealed himself in the Bible, but also in their book of Mormon, a history of the early peoples of the Western hemisphere. Joseph Smith translated the book from Golden Plates that he claimed to have received from the angel. 10 (43m 1s): Morona doctrine in covenants contains further revelation received by Joseph Smith from God. The pearl of great price contains more writings of Smith. They picture God as an eternal being, a flesh and bone who had physical relations with Mary to produce Jesus. So just barely scratching the surface of what they believe. We know that it's contrary to scripture, contrary to what we believe is the truth from the word of God. Salvation and heavily rewards come through obedience to these revelations they go on and teach. 10 (43m 44s): So, so if any one of these religions is right, the others by definition are wrong. We can't all be right if any of these other religions are right, then by definition all others are wrong. If we believe what the Mormons believe, then we cannot believe what born again Christians believe in so forth. And in fact, none, None believe that other religions are equally correct or divinely inspired. 10 (44m 26s): None of no real believer in any of these religious ex experiences or whatever these other religions believe that other religions are equally correct or divinely inspired. I at my house, I get people knocking on the door. Joe's witnesses, Hey, I'm a Christian pastor, but what do they want to do? Well, if we're all Christians, why do they want to convert me? Because they know that I'm not one of them. Right Mormon, right? Same deal, right? So we can all say, hey, let's kumbaya thing and get along and do it, but we just believe differently. 10 (45m 7s): And so it makes a huge difference in the way that we live our lives. The, the scriptures at the various world religions trust do not describe different paths of the same mountain, but very different mountains. So choose, choose wisely. I wanna say thank you to Dr. Dennison for his article. A lot of what I've been talking about here in the last 10 minutes has been information from his article. It's just helpful to, for us to get our heads around truth. At Harvest Church. At Harvest Church here at Harvest Church, we are confident in the word of God, the Bible, that that's all we have. 10 (45m 54s): People show up and they say, Well, you, you teach outta the Bible. I'm like, What else in the world? What do we teach? Even if I knew something else, I wouldn't wanna teach it because anything else's gonna take us up the wrong mountain, down the wrong path. Jesus said, I'm the way that's truth and the life. No man comes to the Father except through, through me. Pretty clear Jesus is declaring that he is the only way that Christianity is the only way. So we have confidence in the word of God because of what we glean from the word of God, but beyond the fact that we just know that as it is, God breathed that he spoke it. 10 (46m 40s): But, but my experience and the scriptures declare that when we read the word of God, there's incredible joy. That is the experience. There's an incredible joy that we experienced as readers and doers of the word of God. So at Harvest Church, we, we are confident in the Word of God, the Bible. Why? Because God's word brings joy to those who follow it. Is that, has that been your experience? It's been, it's been my experience. Now, I reading about God and his work with humanity on the earth always fills me with hope and with joy. 10 (47m 25s): Because if God can work through the people and the pages of scripture, I have hope. And that he can work through me. And that gives me great joy. And it should give you great joy as well. This almost understood this. Psalm 1 19, 1 says this, Joyful are people of integrity who follow the instructions of the Lord, joyful, blessed, happier people of integrity who follow the instructions of Lord, how do we get to that place of integrity? We follow the instruction of the Lord. Integrity flows out of our obedience. And so we become people, man, women, young people, old people of integrity. 10 (48m 6s): When we do what God has asked us to do, Ne Maya got it. He said, The joy of the Lord is our strength. The joy of the Lord is our strength. Where do we get that joy from just doing the will of God? It fills us with just this great deal of joy and confidence because we're doing what God has called us to do. And accompanied the fruit of that obedience is joy. What's the opposite of that? Disobedience brings what? Turmoil. Turmoil. Right? It it just kind of causes angst in our souls. Like I see, Lord, I see, but I, I'm not interested, right? So, so there's this inward internal battle as believers and I, we re we really experience it every day because, I dunno, most people I know get up in the morning and that's when they have their devotional time. 10 (48m 53s): Others do it at night and that's great. But this is the reality. We wake up in the morning, everything's got our attention, right? Like I gotta get my first cup of coffee, right? Because Lord, I'm not gonna be able to really pay attention to what you're saying until I get my first cup of coffee. Well, Lord, I I really need to gotta wake up. So I need to see what's going on in the world. So I click on the internet and I see what's going on on my, you know, homepage. Oh, interesting, interesting. Another cup of coffee that would be helpful, right? Lord. So I'm gonna get another cup of coffee and get my second cup of coffee and oh, I got some emails or, or text messages that are, I mean, they've been waiting all night. 10 (49m 35s): I gotta, I gotta get to 'em eventually, right? So I jump onto that, right? So I probably use a third cup of coffee. I, I have, I mean, after all, I do have three cups of coffee every single morning, right? So it's important that I get my third cup of coffee. And so right within, something pops up, I'm on social media, I'm like, well this is pretty interesting, right? So before long it's been hour and a half and I'm just trying to wake up. Well, so now I'm ready to work. I got like very little time to get ready to go. So, hey, let's pick it up at lunchtime, Lord. Lunchtime rolls around. Oh, I'm so hungry. Let's go in and out. Let's get ourselves a, that's what a hamburger's all about, right? 10 (50m 16s): I mean, you gotta, you gotta eat, right? We're watching this show called Alone. If you guys seen it, it's a great show, right? Custom language. So forgive me for that. But it's a great show, right? So these people are alone on an island and they're trying to survive off the land and they're like, they're 30 days and 40 days and 50 days and, and they're like getting, they're losing. Wait, one guy went on the show and he, he put on like a hundred extra pounds so that on the show he could lose a hundred pounds and still be okay. Like, he's like, I'm gonna chunk it up or I'm gonna, I'm gonna put on some weight. So he's there for, I was watching, I think it was last night, and he's lost like 68 pounds, but he still got some, some love on him. 10 (50m 58s): Like he still can lose some weight. And so, and so he's prepared, he's like going into the, this competition with some chunk on him so that he can survive, right? I'm thinking this is what we need to be doing as believers, like going into the competition, which is the battle, which is life. Like we need to get fated up for the battle, right? Spiritually get a little fat on you, right? Get a little, like, don't just get enough for the moment. Like get enough for the day and, and then get up the next morning and just gorge yourself on some food. Cuz you might get out there in the day. And then you're having to do what these other poor people do and they're eating these mushrooms and these roots and, and snails and mice and right? 10 (51m 54s): So we kind of do the same thing. We resort to things that are just kind of, it's not, it's, but it's not a sign of beef, right? I mean, like God's word is, I mean, I'm thinking of poorer house. Sorry. If you're, if you're a vegetarian, I'm sorry, but I'm not. I never will be. So just like a big old fat poor us. But we gotta we gotta make it intentional. We gotta be intentional. So the joy that the scripture talks about, the joy of the Godly is the reward for godliness. Those, those people on the show, they're all cranky. 10 (52m 34s): Why? Because they're hungry. So they're hangry, right? So when you're not filled up with the word of God and the truth of God, you can get the same way, get spiritually kind of hangry, right? You'll, but when you've feasted well on the word of God, you've got the capacity to have the joy of God. If you don't feast on the word of God, your capacity to have the joy of God is greatly hindered. That's just the way it is. That's why we've talked about this in the wilderness, the people of Israel, they were given man a daily, right? And if they took extra for the next day, fearful that God wasn't going to provide for them, it turned stinky and filled with maggots, right? 10 (53m 19s): And so God said, Hey, trust me, get enough for the day and eat. So get it in, fill it up, and then do it again tomorrow. It's the design every day we're meant to get the word of God, the manner of God. Joyful. First two, joyful are those who obey his loss and search for him with all their hearts. So what we're talking about actually takes effort. Joyful are those who obey that obedience always takes effort, right? We gotta make a decision. I'm going to obey, I'm going to do what God has asked me to do and search for him with all their hearts. And so it requires effort to do what God has called us to do. We, we, it would be so much easier if it was just, well, if it was easier, right? 10 (54m 3s): I texted somebody years ago and we're having coffees and they're like, Man, this Christian life is so hard. I just want it to be easy. I'm like, were you reading the same book that I'm reading? Like I'm not sure that you're reading the same, It's not gonna be easy. We have moments where it's less hard and there's plenty of joy along the way. But we are in a, a spiritual battle in the chapel up the road, we used to have this gray door that, you know, the big four foot wide door if you've been in that building. And we put that door in there and it came in gray. I'm like, that's perfect. It doesn't match the decor, but it's like battleship gray. 10 (54m 44s): Like it reminds us that we're on a battleship but not a cruise ship. Like if we're here, it's because we've got positions of responsibility. We realize that we're in a battle. And so we kept it battleship great until somebody pinned it off white. Didn't that just perfect? Like it went from battleship great like call to action and then to off white. I don't know what happened there, but we lost our vision there for a moment. And, but this is the reality is that we're called to action. It's not always gonna be easy. In fact, most of the times it's gonna be hard work. But the joy of the Lord is our strength. 10 (55m 24s): First three, they do not compromise with evil. This is so back to verse two, Joy floor, those who obey the laws and search for him with all their hearts. So this takes effort, the result, the results of the effort, the fruit of the effort. Verse three, they do not compromise with evil and they walk only in his paths. This is the result of just heartfelt dedication to Jesus, to follow him and to do what he's called us to do. They do not compromise with evil. Maybe you're struggling today with compromise, with some form of evil. You fell in the blank. The world is full of all kinds of evil things that were can be tempted to be running toward. 10 (56m 7s): If you're tempted, you need to stop and get into the word and open up the word of God and just inform your spirit and make a decision in your heart and mind that I am going to follow the Lord Jesus Christ and not compromise with evil, but only walk in his paths. You have charged us, verse four, to keep your commandments carefully. So if you pull that word apart, command mince. It's not suggest mince doesn't even sound very good to say. Let me give you some adjustments, right? 10 (56m 48s): Like it's silly, right? These are words of instruction that God has given to his people. Commandments are commands keeping the commandments or the precepts. Teaching guidelines and principles of God are not optional, actually they're commanded by God. And the whole Bible is a book of instruction and it's kind of pointless to read it and not do what it says. And this almost agreed, he said, Oh, that my actions would consistently reflect your decrees that interesting. 10 (57m 29s): All my actions would consistently reflect your decree. So the writer of Psalms in Psalm one 19 uses eight different words to describe God's word. God's law. He uses eight different words and we don't have time to unpack them today, but each of the words help with a little bit more information, a little more. They give us a little more clarity about what the writer is talking about. So we see law words and then laws. It's actually a different Greek word in the text with a diff slightly different meaning that gives it more better nuance. And again, we don't have time to unpack it, but I would encourage you as homeward to go unpack it and see what you learn. 10 (58m 14s): Laws word, laws, statute, command, decreed, precepts, word or promise. Although my actions would consistently reflect your decree, this was the desire of the writer of the Psalms. He, he probably had an experience where he wasn't doing what he's writing about. And the result was, well, it's everything that we know because we're all guilty of falling short. We know the result. It's, we get lethargic spiritually. We get kind of luke warm spiritually. We get a little less convicted about sin spiritually, where we kind of allow ourselves to be drawn into things that are unhealthy forest spiritually. And so there's a whole host of things that will happen and God knows what will strengthen us. 10 (58m 58s): And the enemy knows what will trip us up. God knows that his word will strengthen us so that my actions would consistently reflect your decrease then I will not be ashamed when I compare my life with your commands and ashamed. That's a word that we can identify with, right? Because we've all felt some shame when we've not aligned our lives with this precepts. We've all felt the cringe of shame. The Lord doesn't want us to feel shameful. So he gives us the antidote here, the remedies that just do what I've called you to do. So the word of God, like a mirror, we talk about this a lot. So we hold up to our lives so that we can kind of see how we're doing. 10 (59m 41s): Lord, how's my life? In light of the word, we hold it up and we say, Yeah, I, I'm not doing that very well, but I, I'm grown here. And so we can kind of discern how we are doing then I will not be ashamed when I compare my life with your commands as I, as I learn your righteous regulations. I will thank you by living as I should. I will obey your decre. Please don't give up on me. This Thomas is so real, right? Because he's like most of us, we're like wanting to honor the Lord with our lives. We're wanting to see God with our whole lives, but we stumble and fall short. 10 (1h 0m 22s): And so the writers saying, Hey, don't, don't give up on me. I wanna make you promise that God will not give up on you. He, he loves you if you stumble, get back up. Anybody have ever, have you ever had to do that before? Many times. Once or twice, right? Like all the time. Like you stumble, right? So you, you don't just stay there in the gut, you get back up, you get back up. And God promises never to give up on you when you say, Lord, I'm, I'm wanting to live my life. I'm doing it imperfectly altogether, but I want to honor you. So this is a humble and accurate prayer for all of us. Lord, my heart and my desire are to honor and obey you. 10 (1h 1m 4s): But please don't give up on me when I stumble. Number one, God's word brings joy to those who follow it. Number two, God's word brings purity to those who obey it. So joy and purity are the results of people who will press in honor and obey God's words. Al 1 19 9 says, How can a young person keep, stay pure? How can a young person stay pure by obeying your word? Good for young, good for old, right? Young and old. How can a person stay pure by just doing what God's word says by obeying your word. 10 (1h 1m 48s): A pure life is the result of obedience. If you're struggling with your personal purity, it's because you're struggling with obedience to the word. And the simple answer is open up the word every day and say, I am going to be obedient by your grace and in your strength. And just begin to walk that out. The internet's the worst place in the world to try to live in personal purity, right? Because things pop up. I was doing an internet search, I shared it with Neil, one of my elders here. And I said, Hey, I was doing this internet search and this all these sites came up. I'm like, Holy walk ole. And I was sitting right there in the sound booth on a Friday, last Friday. I'm like, goodness gracious, I didn't think this search would bring those opportunities, you know? 10 (1h 2m 29s): So they didn't populate the screen, but they certainly populated my options to click on. And I told Neil, I said, I'm so grateful that I've got covenant eyes on my computer so that my wife sees everything on my iPad, my laptop, my phone, So that even if I'm tempted, didn't want to click, I'm afraid to death to do it right? So there's some really good practical things we can put into place to help us not to stumble, right? 10 (1h 3m 10s): So we heard a couple weeks ago that Jeremy talked about the age, I think it's age, right around age 6, 7, 8 years old is the time when little boys and girls have their first, first exposure to hardcore pornography. Hardcore stuff. So what are you gonna do about it? Like you gotta put safeguards and parameters on your devices, right? Dudes. It's not like going to your uncle's house and finding a playboy in his shop. You're carrying the junk with you all the time. 10 (1h 3m 51s): So you're not gonna just possibly stumble onto it. You're going to stumble upon it. So you gotta personal purity is, it's in your hands to figure it out. Pure life as a result of obedience. I've tried hard to find you. If the writer says, Don't let me wander from your commands, Obedience requires effort. Purity requires effort. You gotta decide. I'm not looking at that, I'm not doing that. I'm not participating in that. I'm not doing it. 10 (1h 4m 32s): And then don't do it. Hm? I've hidden your word of my heart that I might not sin against you. We are out of time. The last point is about the wisdom that is available to us. God's word brings wisdom to those who desire it. So part of joy and personal purity and the wisdom is, is engaging your heart, your life, your mind and the word of God. And it's true for people who are brand new in the faith. And it's true for people who've been walking with Jesus for decades, forever because the battle is never over this side of heaven. 10 (1h 5m 18s): It's a battle. We need to get some, Oh, we kinda have some battleship gray on these chairs. But anyway, you get the point. What have you learned and what will you do with what you've learned? What will you, what's your takeaway? What are you gonna do? Spend time with the word, Spend time with the word. How's that different from what you're doing now? Okay, good. What else? Some of you need to get covenant eyes on your computer, All of your devices, all of them. What else? Walk in the spirit. Walk in the spirit. Yeah, yeah, yeah. She's too obey. 10 (1h 5m 58s): Hmm. Choose to obey Jews. Yeah. What do you, when you stumble though, what? What do you do when you stumble? Pass, Forgive forgiveness. Ask God for forgiveness. Keep going, right? Yeah. Gary. Trust in obey. Trust in obey Jesus. So practically speaking, Gary, so you've been walking with Jesus for, I don't know, hundred years probably. Gary is my youth pastor in junior high school. And so we go back a couple years. And so Gary, in all of your years as a leader, as a believer, as a follower of the Lord, Jesus Christ, all of these things sound good, right? 10 (1h 6m 40s): In principle, we, we want the joy. We we, we want the purity, we want the wisdom. But it kept, come up here, Gary, for a moment, come up here for a moment. I never do this. And I started last week and I might just keep going. We'll see. So Gary, let's invite the worship team up as well. Cuz we're gonna worship and we're gonna take communion. And so I'm putting you on the spot cuz I know that I can, Hey Gary, you want me say, I don't know. So I mean these are, you know these are good. Theoretically they're good and and truth, they're solid. But what happens when you're having a bad day and you say something, do something regret a decision. 10 (1h 7m 29s): What? I mean how do you get back? I mean what do you do to, can you, can you alt? Can you overcome that altogether? 11 (1h 7m 37s): I don't think you can over, excuse me, I don't think you can overcome it all together, this side of heaven. But when we fall we have to rise. We have to keep running. The Christian walk is not a sprint or a hundred yard dash. That's what I've learned. It's a long distance race, a marathon. And Jesus promised to always be with us. 10 (1h 8m 2s): But your wife left you. 11 (1h 8m 4s): Yeah. 10 (1h 8m 5s): What does that, I mean, how does that settle? 11 (1h 8m 9s): That was one of the hardest things I've ever had to face in my life. But it wasn't my doing, it wasn't my fault. It was like a, a boat drifting away from the dock. I could see it. And before long she didn't wanna walk with Jesus anymore. And I was one of the elders in the church. She didn't wanna be with me anymore. I have some good friends that I stayed with for a little while cuz I was kicked outta the house and every morning I would get up and I would read my Bible and my friend's wife said to me, Carrie, how can you do that with what you're going through? 11 (1h 8m 50s): You just continue to read the Bible. And I said, Because it's the only thing I have. The word of God is truth. There is no other truth. And it kept me going because I kept listening to what God said, Put one foot in front of the other, Love your children, be there for them and continue on. After seven years, God gave me a wonderful new wife, my Nelly, and she loves the Lord with all of her heart. 11 (1h 9m 31s): Sometimes I think she loves him more than I do. She knows how to reprove me in a way that I receive it. When I mess up, I ask her forgiveness and she forgives me. When she messes up, she asks my forgiveness and I forgive her. It takes two forgiving people to make a marriage work. All I can say is the word of God has been my rock, my strength, my daily necessary food. That's what David said. I have esteemed your word more than my daily food. Yeah, it's like Steve was saying, do you get up and eat breakfast first? 11 (1h 10m 13s): No. Sit down and read the word of God. Even if it's just five minutes, meditate on a verse. The art of meditation is a lost art. And what David meant was to let it roll around in your mind until you're muttering it. That's what the ancients used to do. The Earl Amen of God, Tozer Spurgeon, you could go on and on. There were so many, they relied on the word of God every day and they didn't take a step without it. And that's all I can say. 11 (1h 10m 53s): That's what helped me for 50 years now I've been walking with the Lord. September 20th was 50 years and he's never thank you. 3 (1h 11m 20s): Psalm 2 (1h 11m 22s): Says 3 (1h 11m 23s): That says that the Lord magnifies its word. Even 2 (1h 11m 28s): That's, that's 10 (1h 11m 30s): Very powerful. We're gonna take communion and so it's a good time to examine your hearts and maybe it's time to re rededicate, recommit. Maybe you've been through a hard path like Gary and like some so many of us and you've been angry with God. You've been harboring bitterness, resentment. Well at this time of worship and remembrance, be a time where you get set free. Paul wrote in first Corinthians 1123, For I receive from the Lord what I also delivered to you. 10 (1h 12m 13s): That the Lord Jesus on the night when he was betrayed, he took bread and when he had given thanks, he broke it and said, This is my body which is given for you. Do this to remember me. Let's take the bread. 10 (1h 12m 56s): In the same way, He also, he took the cup after supper saying this cup is the new covenant in my blood. Do this as often as you drink it in remembrance of me. For as often as you eat this bread and drink this cup, you, you proclaimed the Lord's death until he returns. Let's go ahead and take the cup. Thank you Lord. Thank you for your word. Lord, thank you for Giving us joy. 10 (1h 13m 40s): Joy is so available to us. It's promise to us. Thank you for purity. It's available to us and promise to us. 2 (1h 13m 55s): Thank 10 (1h 13m 56s): You for wisdom, Lord. It's available and promise to us, we love you. We need you. Thank you for your grace Jesus name. Let's go ahead and stand up and worship 6 (1h 14m 29s): To you, my friend and all to you. 6 (1h 16m 18s): Sing it out and declare this truth. I all to you, I all to you are my God. One more time I to you are my Father. 6 (1h 17m 8s): We could just 12 (1h 17m 9s): Stay in your presence all day. Thank you for the honor that it is to exalt your name. Thank you for your scriptures. Thank you for your word that never returns void. Lord, maybe we wake up in the morning with a desire to open our Bibles. May we wake up with a desire to get your word in our spirits and on our minds. Thank you that you are faithful. Thank you for your love. Would you go before us this week? 12 (1h 17m 51s): It's in your precious name we pray. Amen.

Millions of people read from the Book of Mormon on a daily basis. But what exactly is that book? What is its relationship to the Bible? And why do members of various Christian “restoration” traditions perceive it as scripture? Listen to this episode to learn more about the Book of Mormon, its origins, and use.

After a short break to end last year's run of shows we're back with Ben Sang to talk Mormanism as a continuation of the American Utopia Series and the outgrowth of the offsite art movement in 2022. We go into the history of the Plutonist vs. Neptunist school of geology/volcanology and the life of Dolamieau, international playboy and geologist who inspired the blacksploitation movie Dolomite and was a member of Knights of Malta. Other topics: Archival Art, Nicholas Luhmen's Cybernetic Theory, Angel Maroni, Golden Plates, metadata, library arts and the structure of Memory, Maurice and Katya Krafft, Nancy Holt, Final Hot Desert, the utopia of Deseret and how all of this relates to this Very Weird moment we find ourselves in today.

Nesse episódio ouvimos Sharon Van Etten, Echo & The Bunnymen, Paul Weller, My Magical Glowing Lens e Beastie Boys. Além disso também Tapples, Donkey Kid, Black Light White Light, Davoli, Jacob Faurholt, Howland, Tube, Collard Green, Leif Shively Band, Hunter Ellis, TheWorst, Dkandle, 1st Base Runner, Penny Roox, Pliskin Brown, Golden Plates, Bee Hall, Slime Lush, Loud Bangs, Welcome Strawberry, Sun Bear Hum e Bombhappies.

Mike Allred is one of the greatest and most prolific comics creators in the history of the industry. From his creator-owned work like Madman (celebrating its 30th anniversary in 2022), Red Rocket 7, The Golden Plates,  iZombie, and Bowie, to critically acclaimed runs on Marvel titles, including FF (with Matt Fraction), X-Statix (with Peter Milligan), and the Eisner Award-winning Silver Surfer (with Dan Slott), Mike has repeatedly redefined the medium and himself as an artist.His latest work, X-Ray Robot, is now available in trade paperback at your local comics shop. The glasses-free 3D cover gallery in the back of the book will blow your mind.Thank you for supporting us on Patreon! Enjoy this extended edition, with more than an hour of extra content. Our wide-ranging conversation touches on Mike's early career, his spirituality, his lifelong struggle with mental health, and what we promise is the sweetest meet-cute you've ever heard.Stories Covered In Detail This Episode:"Enter -- the Exquisite Elemental!" - Fantastic Four #81, by Stan Lee and Jack Kirby w/Joe Sinnott, ©1968 Marvel Comics"Even an Android Can Cry" - Avengers #58, written by Roy Thomas, art by John Buscema and George Klein, ©1968 Marvel Comics"To Squash a Spider!" - Amazing Spider-Man #67, written by Stan Lee, art by John Romita and Jim Mooney, ©1968 Marvel Comics"The Power and the Prize!" - Silver Surfer #3, written by Stan Lee, art by John Buscema and Joe Sinnott, ©1968 Marvel Comics"Marvel by the Month" theme v. 2.0 by Robb Milne, sung by Barb Allen, with bass by Ryan ‘Biff' Dudder. All incidental music by Robb Milne. Visit us on internet at marvelbythemonth.com, follow us on Instagram at @marvelbythemonth and support us on Patreon at patreon.com/marvelbythemonth.Much of our historical context information comes from Wikipedia. Please join us in supporting them at wikimediafoundation.org.

We love the Gilded Age here at The History Chicks! We have a special treat for you: a guest appearance by historian Carl Raymond of the Gilded Gentleman Podcast. In Act 1,"Invisible Magicians," he pays tribute to the world of the domestic servant, and in Act 2, "Golden Plates and Dinners on Horseback," he'll give you a peek into the over-the-top social events of the moneyed few.See Privacy Policy at https://art19.com/privacy and California Privacy Notice at https://art19.com/privacy#do-not-sell-my-info.

Charlie Smith, editor of the Georgia Straight

XVI. Outrageous stories of Gilded Age dinners served on plates of gold, live swans swimming in a lake in the center of your table and yes, even dinners served on horseback are all true. In this show, find out what some of the actual dishes served really were made and served along with stories of the restaurateurs, chefs and hostesses that created these lavish events. We'll take a look at some actual balls and dinners given my Mrs. Astor among others and even on the fictional table of Bertha Russell in the recent HBO series The Gilded Age.Visit the Gilded Gentleman website for more information.

Today John is joined by LDS Discussions and Nemo to review the history of the "Golden Plates" as they relate to the creation of the Book of Mormon. The discussion is based on the essay entitled "Book of Mormon: Gold Plates of the Book of Mormon" which was created on the LDS Discussions website. ————— We are 100% donor funded! Please click HERE to donate and keep this content coming! Click here to donate monthly: $10 $25 $50 ————— MSP on Spotify MSP on Apple Podcasts MSP Blog Instagram Patreon TikTok Discord   Contact Us! *MormonStories@gmail.com *PO Box 171085 Salt Lake City, UT 84117

Today John is joined by LDS Discussions and Nemo to review the history of the "Golden Plates" as they relate to the creation of the Book of Mormon. The discussion is based on the essay entitled "Book of Mormon: Gold Plates of the Book of Mormon" which was created on the LDS Discussions website. Show notes: Gold Plates essay on LDS Discussions MS Episode on Gold Plates fabrication MS Episode on Robert Ritner "Now You Know" episode by LDS church on plates Examples of FairLDS apologetics on Prygi Plates Sandra Tanner Dan Vogel --- Send in a voice message: https://anchor.fm/lds-discussions/message

Have you heard about the Brazil Plates? The late Dr. John Pratt is going to tell us more about them! GT:  Okay, so, tell us about the Brazilian group. How did you get associated with them? John:  Somebody in April of 2019, a friend sends me a link and says, “Hey, a guy in Brazil […] The post Brazil Golden Plates (Part 5 of 9) appeared first on Gospel Tangents.

The best place to buy Jonathan's books is here:https://www.digitalegend.com/catalog/advanced_search_result.php?keywords=jonathan+nevilleThey can also be found at Deseret Book and Amazon

The best place to buy Jonathan's books is here:https://www.digitalegend.com/catalog/advanced_search_result.php?keywords=jonathan+nevilleThey can also be found at Deseret Book and Amazon

Today, we are speaking with AnnaMarie, a woman who has recently left the Mormon church. The Mormon church is one of the newest Christian denominations and also has one of the most unique origin stories. AnnaMarie was born into and grew up in the Mormon Church and accepted its customs as ordinary until she went off to college. She was committed to her role and the expectations of her church, but when she tried to leave quietly she was stalked by missionaries in the group. She'll get into the details on her involvement and more in today's episode.Support us on Patreon! patreon.com/themodestyfilesFollow us on Instagram @themodestyfiles for updates and bonus content.

In this episode, Troy has a conversation with Elder Brycen of pop punk music group Golden Plates. The Troy and Tony Show (2021) The Troy and Tony Show Merchandise https://troyandtonysclub.com The Troy and Tony Show Now Streaming The Troy and Tony Show (Spotify) https://open.spotify.com/show/3pcxcVN... The Troy and Tony Show (Youtube) https://www.youtube.com/channel/UCYX8... The Troy and Tony Show (Apple Podcasts) https://podcasts.apple.com/us/podcast... Sponsored by Passion Bandana @PassionBandana https://www.etsy.com/shop/PASSIONBAND​​​... https://passionbandana.com/

This week, Stephanie and Lacey are diving into yet another ~*~ReLiGiOn~*~ to debunk. But first, the girls share more of their own past religious experiences and how they were raised. With each of them growing into their own spiritual beliefs, gaining respect from their parents has been quite the challenge over the years….but it's getting there….hopefully. So…Mormonism….WTF? Today's guest is Liz Gunnell, an Ex-Orthodox Mormon, who left the Mormon church 6 years ago. Together the three girls dive the feck in.  ***TRIGGER WARNING*** They discuss: -The Origin Story of Mormonism/Latter Day Saints -Joseph Smith and the Golden Plates -….Why Utah? -So….this is a cult, right? -Anachronisms (things to be found false) within the Book Of Mormon -Liz's upbringing and childhood experiences growing up in the church -Mormonism & LGBTQ+ -Grooming children  -Polygamy- AKA, “The Sister Wives”- -Liz's healing journey and where she's at now   Keep up with us online: Liz's IG: https://www.instagram.com/lizgunnell/ Liz's Tiktok: https://www.tiktok.com/@lordliz Link to Jeremy Runnell's CES Letter to the Mormon Church: https://cesletter.org Oh Here We Go's IG: https://www.instagram.com/ohhherewego/ Stephanie's IG: https://www.instagram.com/stephanieparsley/ Lacey's IG: https://www.instagram.com/thelaceyclaire/

We're (momentarily) back baby!! On this EXTRA SPECIAL BONUS EPISODE, your regular HOST is the GUEST!! From March, in his other guise as SUNNYSIDE UPPERS on "I Like Your Style", a podcast hosted by Elder Brycen of the GOLDEN PLATES, a band out of San Diego USA. We're releasing it on the eve of the new Uppers single "MARY" (streaming everywhere Fri 13th!!) Topics include the death of rock'n'roll, other people's opinions, happiness, Bob Dylan, Anne of Green Gables, altered-state adventures and much more!!!

Faye shares her story and testimony of Jesus and in part 2 shares specifically about her new book "Caractors unlocked" which gives information on the reformed Egyptian text used as described by Moroni to inscribe their narrative in the Book of Mormon.   To quote from page 9 "at this juncture it is obvious that the readable demotic reproduced on the Caractors sheet is fantastic evidence that confirms the Book of Mormon was written by real historical people".   These caractors were meticulously copied by Joseph Smith onto paper directly from the golden plates which as described by David Whitmer took him over one week to do as he was so careful to exactly copy them.   We have photos of those characters today.Purchase "Characters Unlocked" https://www.bomf.org/online-store.htmlContact us with comments or questions at:http://restoredgospelpodcast@gmail.comOr communicate with us on our facebook page:https://www.facebook.com/Restored-Gospel-Podcast-474436583303504/?modal=admin_todo_tour

Mike Allred is one of the greatest and most prolific comics creators in the history of the industry. From his creator-owned work like Madman (celebrating its 30th anniversary in 2022), Red Rocket 7, The Golden Plates,  iZombie, and Bowie, to critically acclaimed runs on Marvel titles, including FF (with Matt Fraction), X-Statix (with Peter Milligan), and the Eisner Award-winning Silver Surfer (with Dan Slott), Mike has repeatedly redefined the medium and himself as an artist.His latest work, X-Ray Robot, is now available in trade paperback at your local comics shop. The glasses-free 3D cover gallery in the back of the book will blow your mind.Contribute to our Patreon at the $4/month level to get access to our bonus feed, which contains an extended version of this episode that contains more than an hour of extra content. Our wide-ranging conversation touched on Mike's early career, his spirituality, his lifelong struggle with mental health, and what we promise is the sweetest meet-cute you've ever heard. Plus Spider-Man #67!That same pledge level gets you access to our Omnibus companion episode, which covers all of the September 1968 issues that we didn't get to in this episode (that were available on Marvel Unlimited, anyway).Stories Covered In Detail This Episode:"Enter -- the Exquisite Elemental!" - Fantastic Four #81, by Stan Lee and Jack Kirby w/Joe Sinnott, ©1968 Marvel Comics"Even an Android Can Cry" - Avengers #58, written by Roy Thomas, art by John Buscema and George Klein, ©1968 Marvel Comics"The Power and the Prize!" - Silver Surfer #3, written by Stan Lee, art by John Buscema and Joe Sinnott, ©1968 Marvel Comics"Marvel by the Month" theme v. 2.0 by Robb Milne, sung by Barb Allen, with bass by Ryan ‘Biff’ Dudder. All incidental music by Robb Milne. Visit us on internet at marvelbythemonth.com, follow us on Instagram at @marvelbythemonth and support us on Patreon at patreon.com/marvelbythemonth.Much of our historical context information comes from Wikipedia. Please join us in supporting them at wikimediafoundation.org.

Welcome back Campers! In todays Holier-Than-Tho Character Creation Challenge, Lucas has thrown the Holy Grail down for Justin and Michael to immaculately concept their very best version of a lvl 3 Cleric. Hope you packed some Golden Plates, and a Seer Stone, because this Hajj won't end until someone reaches Heavens Gate and is declared Bodhi. Don't forget to catch the gang every Monday night 7ish central on www.twitch.tv/TheNegotiators and follow the podcast on twitter @FantasyCG for all updates, news and announcements.

Description: Russ East, the founder of Utah Partnerships for Christ (UPFC), and his family were 4th generation Mormons before being invited to a Bible church in their hometown and becoming followers of Jesus. We talk with Russ about how UPFC is reaching out to Mormons in Utah and how mission teams are a part of their ministry. He also shares how a mission trip to Utah can help you reach out to Mormons in your own community. Listen to learn more about serving among Mormons as you discover God's call for your life and ministry. Notes: www.upfc.org Bio: I grew up in a fourth generation Mormon family. When I turned eight, I was baptized and confirmed into the Church of Jesus Christ of Latter Day Saints. I was soon encouraged to save money for my mission when I turned nineteen. I can vividly remember tithing ten percent of my one dollar a week allowance, and how good that made me feel. I remember singing songs like, “Book of Mormon Stories”, and “The Golden Plates”. I also remember the fear that swept my heart because my Mom and Dad were not married in the Mormon Temple. If they had been I was taught our family would be sealed together in heaven, and never apart when we died. I remember competition rather than Christ's love. I remember pressure to be perfect rather than the plan of true salvation. --- Send in a voice message: https://podcasters.spotify.com/pod/show/missionworks/message

In the anticipated Part 2 of "The Witnesses," Jake immerses into the world after Martin Harris, Oliver Cowdrey and David Whitmer witness the plates and the vision with Moroni. Part 2 focuses more on the undying and firm testimonies of the three witnesses throughout their lives. We also experience the story of the eight witnesses: Christian Whitmer, Jacob Whitmer, Peter Whitmer Jr., John Whitmer, Hiram Page, Joseph Smith Sen., Hyrum Smith and Samuel H. Smith. Many of these witnesses of the Book of Mormon had rocky histories with the church, and many left. None of which however, denied their testimony of the Book of Mormon. This episode is a lot more gritty, due to the experiences with the mob and the violence the witnesses and others received

This episode of the SU Podcast will be a little different! From the beginning of development for the SU Podcast, the Saints Unscripted team has always wanted to create episodes where we try to immerse listeners into the world of the historical past. For our first episode, we wanted to tell the amazing story and backstories of the witnesses for the golden plates! In part 1, we take you through the life events for the 3 witnesses, Martin Harris, Oliver Cowdery, and David Whitmer, leading up to their vision of the angel Moroni and the golden plates. In this historical journey, you will be taken back in time to the mid-19th century and hopefully learn a little bit about the characters themselves and the lives they lived.

My first episode I interview golden plates ! We talk about Carl Sagan to the devil ! 1.23.21 --- This episode is sponsored by · Anchor: The easiest way to make a podcast. https://anchor.fm/app --- Send in a voice message: https://anchor.fm/james-lewis065/message Support this podcast: https://anchor.fm/james-lewis065/support

Exploring the Bizarre (KCORradio.com) hosts TIM BECKLEY and TIM SWARTZ welcome award-winning journalist, explorer and filmmaker, ALEX CHIONETTI whose life work has been devoted to lost civilizations, extraterrestrial visitations in both past and present times and solving scientific enigmas. During the last decade Alex discovered two pre-Incan cities in the central sierra of Peru never previously recognized before by official archaeology. Exploring the Chilean high desert, he found figures and lines related to the Nazca lines. In his book, "The Mysteries of the Tayos Caves," he tells the intriguing story of lost tablets and an immense treasure trove of gold plates. Erich von Daniken takes credit for the discovery, but admits in an exclusive interview with Alex that he tale is not quite as he told it. Very intriguing guest who was an original developer of the "Ancient Aliens" pilot and the first two seasons on the History Channel. His "Mysteries of the Tayos Caves," is available on Amazon.

In today's episode, we talk about the three witnesses to the golden plates that Joseph Smith (first prophet of the Church of Jesus Christ of Latter-day Saints) translated into the Book of Mormon. Some people think that no other people saw the plates other than Joseph Smith. However, that is not true. Martin Harris, David Whitmer, and Oliver Cowdery were the three witnesses to the plates (along with many others, both men and women). These three men were once excommunicated from the church, came back to the church, and never denied what they saw. Don't forget to subscribe to our YouTube channel: https://www.youtube.com/saintsunscripted

It's the end! Oliver tells the thrilling tale of when Joseph finds the box and pulls out the Golden Plates.   Read along here The Glass Looker, Treasure Digs

Jonathan Neville Author, JD, Lawyer, Educator lettervii.com – moronisamerica.com – bookofmormonwars.comPresentations:Church history to build, not destroy, faith.Current trends in the International Church.Purchase Jonathan’s newest book called, “A Man that Can Translate: Joseph Smith and the Nephite Interpreters”. “Joseph Smith, Jr., and his principle scribe, Oliver Cowdery, claimed that Joseph translated the golden plates with an instrument the Nephites called “interpreters.” Joseph and Oliver called them Urim and Thummim. Some of their contemporaries claimed instead that Joseph merely dictated words that appeared on a seer stone he placed in a hat. The dual narratives were well known in 1834. In response, Joseph and Oliver formally reaffirmed that Joseph used the Urim and Thummim. They reiterated that position for the rest of their lives.In recent years, historians have revived the seer stone narrative. Which version is correct? Urim and Thummim or seer stone? Can they both be correct, or is it an either/or situation? Some historians have reconciled the discrepancies by simply redefining the term “Urim and Thummim” to mean both the Nephite interpreters and the seer stones, but that revisionist approach contradicts the plain historical usage. This book explores the historical evidence and proposes a solution that vindicates the testimonies of Joseph and Oliver while also accepting the statements of the observers as to what they saw. Except what they actually saw was not what they thought they saw.”Jonathan Neville is a lawyer, businessman, educator and author who has written over forty books, including both nonfiction and fiction. He has studied Church history and the Book of Mormon for decades, but didn’t begin publishing in the field until 2015. As of July 2017, he has published ten books on these topics. He also writes for several blogs, including lettervii.com, and moronisamerica.com.Brother Neville approaches these issues like the criminal prosecutor he once was. He pursues the evidence wherever it leads and doesn’t simply “assume” anything or take anyone’s word at face value. When it comes to Church history, he follows the adage: “trust, but verify.” That process of verifying has led to some important new discoveries that he finds to be faith-affirming and corroborate what Joseph Smith said and what the Book of Mormon teaches.For the last twenty-five years, Jonathan has lived in Utah, but he has lived in Europe for 8 years, in the Philippines, in California, Arizona, New Mexico, Nevada, Washington, Tennessee, and Illinois. He has visited over 60 countries on every continent—including a Chilean base in Antarctica. He travels frequently with his wife Beverly, a PhD and Division Director for the Salt Lake County Health Department who is also a college professor and author, a popular speaker at BYU Education Week, and the author of an article in the Ensign in 2015. They have eight children, seven grandchildren, and no pets.Tim Ballard, author of the Lincoln Hypothesis among other books, says Brother Neville’s book titled Moroni’s America is “a definite game changer… finally a complete, honest, and faithful look at Book of Mormon geography that deals with all the tough questions.”Brother Neville’s book, Whatever Happened to the Golden Plates?, explains how Joseph Smith actually translated two separate sets of plates—only one of which came from Moroni’s box in the Hill Cumorah. This new understanding of Church history helps explain details that have puzzled historians for decadesBrother Neville has spoken at firesides and conferences throughout the United States and in Europe.Support the show (http://www.bookofmormonevidencestreaming.com)

Lesson 13 (2 Nephi 1-5)"He Works in Me to do His Will"Book of Mormon Evidence Podcast - Come Follow Me Supplementary StudyHosted by Rod Meldrum - Author & International Speaker - The FIRM FoundationGuests in this episode: Jonathan Neville Jonathan Neville is a lawyer, businessman, educator and author who has written over forty books, including both nonfiction and fiction. He has studied Church history and the Book of Mormon for decades, but didn’t begin publishing in the field until 2015. As of July 2017, he has published ten books on these topics. He also writes for several blogs, including lettervii.com.Brother Neville approaches these issues like the criminal prosecutor he once was. He pursues the evidence wherever it leads and doesn’t simply “assume” anything or take anyone’s word at face value. When it comes to Church history, he follows the adage: “trust, but verify.” That process of verifying has led to some important new discoveries that he finds to be faith-affirming and corroborate what Joseph Smith said and what the Book of Mormon teaches.For the last twenty-five years, Jonathan has lived in Utah, but he has lived in Europe for 8 years, in the Philippines, in California, Arizona, New Mexico, Nevada, Washington, Tennessee, and Illinois. He has visited over 60 countries on every continent—including a Chilean base in Antarctica. He travels frequently with his wife Beverly, a PhD and Division Director for the Salt Lake County Health Department who is also a college professor and author, a popular speaker at BYU Education Week, and the author of an article in the Ensign in 2015. They have eight children, seven grandchildren, and no pets.Tim Ballard, author of the Lincoln Hypothesis among other books, says Brother Neville’s book titled Moroni’s America is “a definite game changer… finally a complete, honest, and faithful look at Book of Mormon geography that deals with all the tough questions.”Brother Neville’s book, Whatever Happened to the Golden Plates?, explains how Joseph Smith actually translated two separate sets of plates—only one of which came from Moroni’s box in the Hill Cumorah. This new understanding of Church history helps explain details that have puzzled historians for decades.Brother Neville has spoken at firesides and conferences throughout the United States and in Europe.http://www.moronisamerica.comhttps://deseretbook.com/t/author/jonathan-nevilleSupport the show (http://www.bookofmormonevidencestreaming.com)

Did Oliver Cowdery really "see" the Golden Plates, or was he deceived or lying? But really does any of that matter in the light of the major evidence against the Book of Mormon?

Historian Don Bradley says that masonic implements were found with the golden plates.  What were these implements, and how are they related to modern LDS temple ceremonies? Don:  Joseph, Sr. tells this guy [non-Mormon named Fayette Lapham] about the plates. He tells him that on the top plate there were the implements of masonry, as […] The post Masonic Golden Plates & Temple Theology (Part 7 of 12) appeared first on Gospel Tangents.

Hospitality entrepreneur and all round nice guy Robbie Lecchino from the hugely successful King of the Castle Cafe talks to us this week. Robbie was kind enough to share with us his journey so far, where it all began, the ups and downs of re-inventing his business and brand, and how he leverages social-media and his brand to feed into his success.Robbie gives us an up and close look at how he manages to keep his business exciting for his audience and customers and how social-media has played a huge part. He takes us inside the first 6 years of his business and talks about the overwhelming success he encountered early on when his cafe was just a small hole in the wall to now dominating Pakington Street as a huge cafe precinct (and with other locations in tow).He gives us his personal take on how to use social-media for his business and how it all sits with him. He is super conscious that people eat with their eyes and so it is interesting to hear how he is reinventing his menu and keeping his customers intrigued.His biggest achievement to date was winning the Geelong Business Excellence Awards and Golden Plates and receiving kudos from his peers for inspiring them on their journey also.To find out more about Robbie check him out here: http://www.kingofthecastlecafe.com.au/

In today's episode, we talk about the three witnesses to the golden plates that Joseph Smith (first prophet of the Church of Jesus Christ of Latter-day Saints) translated into the Book of Mormon. Some people think that no other people saw the plates other than Joseph Smith. However, that is not true. Martin Harris, David Whitmer, and Oliver Cowdery were the three witnesses to the plates (along with many others, both men and women). These three men were once excommunicated from the church, came back to the church, and never denied what they saw. Make sure to follow us on Facebook, Instagram and twitter! Check out all our videos out on YouTube!

The Drunk Mormon Podcast is LIVE in Los Angeles, California! Join David and Lauren as they drink a custom cocktail, dish about how the podcast even got started, and then take a deep dive down the rabbit hole of the various and sometimes contradictory accounts of Joseph Smith's First Vision and the discovery of the Golden Plates. Think you know what happened? Think again.... Follow us @drunkmormonpod And we're on Patreon!  

On this week's episode Ravi discusses the horrific events of this past week (01:00). A public warning has been sent out after a group of kids were found to have been playing with needles that they thought were darts (08:00). The Georgia Straight has released their annual "Golden Plates" awards (09:54). The guys recap the Juno Awards (13:40). K.J. thinks we don't go hard enough on one group of people (16:57). Ravi really likes Columbus for some reason (17:15). Have you muted Michael Jackson yet? (18:10). The Bat Signal has been visible over downtown Vancouver for the last few nights (18:56). Congrats to Elias Petterson for breaking the Canucks rookie scoring record (21:37). Vancouver has been named the third best Dog Friendly City in the world (22:47).

Religion Today host Marten Tanner talks in depth about the Golden Plates that were translated into The Book of Mormon. Tanner discusses what the plates were made of, how big they were, how much they weigh, and more.

At this moment, with the 2018 October General Conference just weeks away, many Latter-day Saints are—consciously and unconsciously—going through in their minds and hearts how they view and feel about teachings from the church's top leaders. What is their authoritative status? Are they to be considered on par with (or even superior and more authoritative than) the teachings found within the Standard Works? And what about our own personal revelation on particular subjects? How does that fit into the mix with scripture and statements and teachings from LDS general authorities? Do we leave aside our own sense of what God has led us to believe and simply shape our worldviews according to the leaders' teachings because they  can't/won't lead us astray? Or do we wrestle and seek a way to honor all these sources of authority? This episode discusses these and other dilemmas related to what makes something "canonical" (in some way)—for the church as a whole, and/or for each of us personally. In addition to the upcoming general conference, this conversation was prompted by a set of studies and essays that have been recently compiled together and published in a new volume: The Expanded Canon: Perspectives on Mormonism & Sacred Texts (Greg Kofford Books). In the episode, Mormon Matters host Dan Wotherspoon and the book's three editors, Blair Van Dyke, Brian D. Birch, and Boyd J. Peterson share about the above, and other book topics. They go into those mentioned above, as well as the authoritative status of women's writings, the nature of the shifts the church's views on electronic publishing have undergone (are we seeing online versions of the scriptures and other teachings shared via the web as equal in status of the same things in print?), and also the authoritative status of official "Proclamations" the church has issued in the past, and recently, with a particular focus on "The Family: A Proclamation to the World." To what degree are various Latter-day Saints incorporating this proclamation into their own "personal canon"?  Dan and the editors also briefly introduce other subjects taken on in the volume, such as the best way to approach reading scriptures, the place and role of the Golden Plates in LDS consciousness and conversation, how the Book of Mormon, Doctrine and Covenants, and Pearl of Great Price wound their way into canonical status, as well as the very character of each of the teachings within these books and what tasks or roles they perform in Mormon hearts and minds. They also overview a few particulars of most of the book's other topics, including how one non-Mormon scholar of religion approaches LDS truth claims, especially those contained in discussions surrounding the Golden Plates: their finding, taking possession of, translating, and being revealed to chosen witnesses, and proposes a third way that falls between full belief in all the events as reported and the conclusion many land on: that Joseph Smith is fraud and deliberate deceiver. And finally, what about patriarchal blessings? How do Mormons view them and their role in their personal lives? Where do these reverenced spiritual creations fit in the idea of the Mormon (or personal) "canon" ? The episode speaks of the book and tells of its coming together, but it is used primarily as a springboard for getting into these quite profound issues and the wrestles they generate for both the institutional church and its members. We think you will really enjoy what transpires in this two-part episode, and will come away with many things worth chewing on in your own church- and self-examinations.

At this moment, with the 2018 October General Conference just weeks away, many Latter-day Saints are—consciously and unconsciously—going through in their minds and hearts how they view and feel about teachings from the church's top leaders. What is their authoritative status? Are they to be considered on par with (or even superior and more authoritative than) the teachings found within the Standard Works? And what about our own personal revelation on particular subjects? How does that fit into the mix with scripture and statements and teachings from LDS general authorities? Do we leave aside our own sense of what God has led us to believe and simply shape our worldviews according to the leaders' teachings because they  can't/won't lead us astray? Or do we wrestle and seek a way to honor all these sources of authority? This episode discusses these and other dilemmas related to what makes something "canonical" (in some way)—for the church as a whole, and/or for each of us personally. In addition to the upcoming general conference, this conversation was prompted by a set of studies and essays that have been recently compiled together and published in a new volume: The Expanded Canon: Perspectives on Mormonism & Sacred Texts (Greg Kofford Books). In the episode, Mormon Matters host Dan Wotherspoon and the book's three editors, Blair Van Dyke, Brian D. Birch, and Boyd J. Peterson share about the above, and other book topics. They go into those mentioned above, as well as the authoritative status of women's writings, the nature of the shifts the church's views on electronic publishing have undergone (are we seeing online versions of the scriptures and other teachings shared via the web as equal in status of the same things in print?), and also the authoritative status of official "Proclamations" the church has issued in the past, and recently, with a particular focus on "The Family: A Proclamation to the World." To what degree are various Latter-day Saints incorporating this proclamation into their own "personal canon"?  Dan and the editors also briefly introduce other subjects taken on in the volume, such as the best way to approach reading scriptures, the place and role of the Golden Plates in LDS consciousness and conversation, how the Book of Mormon, Doctrine and Covenants, and Pearl of Great Price wound their way into canonical status, as well as the very character of each of the teachings within these books and what tasks or roles they perform in Mormon hearts and minds. They also overview a few particulars of most of the book's other topics, including how one non-Mormon scholar of religion approaches LDS truth claims, especially those contained in discussions surrounding the Golden Plates: their finding, taking possession of, translating, and being revealed to chosen witnesses, and proposes a third way that falls between full belief in all the events as reported and the conclusion many land on: that Joseph Smith is fraud and deliberate deceiver. And finally, what about patriarchal blessings? How do Mormons view them and their role in their personal lives? Where do these reverenced spiritual creations fit in the idea of the Mormon (or personal) "canon" ? The episode grounds itself in the book and its coming together, but The Expanded Canon is used primarily as a springboard for getting into the profound issues and the wrestles they generate for both the institutional church and its members. We think you will really enjoy what transpires in this two-part episode, and that you will come away with many things worth chewing on in your own church- and self-examinations.

This week David and Lauren drink Negronis and dive deep to learn just exactly how the Golden Plates were translated into The Book of Mormon!   If you like our show, give us a rating and review!   FOLLOW US: @DrunkMormonPod www.facebook.com/DrunkMormonPodcast

There are 3 "Givens" that we can not prove, but are the foundation for our faith. Because these "Givens" can not be proven, they have to be given to you by our Heavenly Father. This episode talks about what they are, and how you can KNOW that they are true. ---Transcript--- Hey everyone, this is Russell and I want to welcome you to this episode of the podcast. This is one that I am super excited to share with you guys because this is actually a talk that I wrote almost three years ago. I gave it in a ward we were in, and then recently after that we moved to a different ward and I had a chance to kind of rewrite this thing, and then I shared it as a class inside the Elder's Quorum and then a couple of months later I got asked to speak in church again and I wanted to share it with so many people. So I kind of reworked it again and shared it again. I knew that if and when I ever started this podcast that this was going to be really the first episode after the introduction, because this is the foundation. If you think about anything in life, if you think about a building, the first thing people do is lay the foundation. And if the foundation is brittle and soft, the building will collapse, it will tip over, it won't be very good. You think about relationships, the foundation is the beginning, when you first meet your spouse. The time, the energy, the effort you put in the foundation is the key. It's what makes the relationship great. In a business it's the same thing. Everything in life that's good and everything that's going to become great starts with having the right foundation. I think a lot of times people get into religion or beliefs or things like that and they don't really have a foundation. They're going off of opinions or thoughts or things. I remember once hearing Elder Bruce R. McConkie speak and he said his job was not to try to force his beliefs on other people, his job was to figure out what does God actually believe and then match and align our beliefs with his. Because what we believe, we have beliefs that come and go, but we need to know what the truth is and then we need to shift our beliefs to the truth, because the truth is really the only thing that matters. So that's kind of what I wanted to begin with here, the three givens presentation is all about that foundation and aligning yourself with the truth. And when you have that as the foundation, that gives you the ability to have everything else you want in life. It gives you the ability to go from good to great and beyond. So that's what this presentation is about. Because those that don't have this initial foundation, there will be a time in everybody's life, and it's happened in different parts of my life, I know it's happened in your life and people around you where the test and the trials and the temptations come and they come hard. It's rare that any of us get to escape this life without any of those things. And this foundation, at least for me, is what gives me the ability to know and to wake up with absolute certainty all the time. I talked about this in the initial podcast and I'm sure we'll have an episode just on this, but there's three questions we need to know. Where did I come from? Why am I here? Where am I going? And to really understand that, you have to understand the three givens. This is the foundation of everything. There's a quote from Jeffery R Holland that I love that talks about this, about when the trials and temptations and all these things come and they try to destroy us. How are we going to take that? What are we going to do? And he said, “When difficult times come upon us, when temptation seems all around, will we be, are we now prepared to stand our ground and outlast the intruder? Are we equipped for combat to stay loyal for as long as it takes? To stay true for the duration of the war? Can we hold fast to the principals and the people that truly matter eternally to us?” So that's my question for you, are you? And if not, it's the foundation we need to build a solid foundation. For me this is the foundation of my faith. Some of these things, depending on who's listening, I know we've got people who are members of the church listening and so you will know and understand some of these things. We have people who were part of the church who have left, who suddenly things are going to be hard for. You're not going to want to believe them. But like I said, it's not about what we believe, it's about what is the truth. What does God believe? We need to believe what he believes because it's what's true. Then we also have people who are non members here who, some of these things may be brand new to you. Some of you may believe one or two of them, or understand a couple of them, but some may be foreign. But there are three essential things we must know, as the foundation of our faith. So to kind of give you guys the back story behind this, why do I call this the three givens? The reason, when I was in 8th grade, I had a teacher and we have a lot of teachers in school, and my guess is most of you guys don't remember any of your teachers names. There are very few that I remember their names. But there was one teacher I had in a subject I didn't really love, it's math. But he was so excited about math. When he would come, he was so excited about math. His name was Mr. Turner, and he would come in and start teaching and talking, and I didn't know half the time what he was talking about, but he was so excited and so passionate. And for me now, fast forwarding all these years later as someone who is an educator and an author and someone who speaks, that passion and enthusiasm is what makes people remember you. Mr. Turner was someone who was just so passionate about math, and while I think I struggled in his class mostly because I wasn't a good student and was not in the right spot in my life to really learn and grow, I do remember this random conversation he had the first day he had the first day of class. It was about a concept that he called the givens. It was funny, as I was first preparing this talk a couple of years ago, I was like I need to email Mr. Turner and see…I'm sure he doesn't remember me, I was the quiet, awkward kid in the back who didn't ever raise my hand, but I was listening. So I emailed him, in fact, I found the email just recently here, so in the email I said, I was able to find his email address somewhere online, and I didn't know if it was him or not, but I wanted to try and see. Because I wanted to make sure I understood this right. So my email to him was, “Hey Mr. Turner, I'm sure you don't remember me, but you were my 8th grade geometry teacher back in 1993.” Which actually, as of today, was 24 years ago, crazy. Anyway, “You were honestly one of the best teachers I've had through my entire schooling, even college. I wanted to thank you for that. Also, I'm actually writing a talk for church tomorrow and I had flashback back to the first day of 8th grade where you were talking about the foundations of math. I'm not sure if I remember this one 100% correct, but you said something about there being givens that were un-provable, but we had to believe them for the rest of math or geometry to work. I think there was a line, a line segment, a point, and probably a few others. Did I get that right?” “In my talk I'm going to relate that faith and how there are givens that you have to have to believe in, that aren't really provable. Anyway, I want to let you know, 21 years later, that the kids remember what you're teaching and it still has an impact on them. Thanks, Russell Brunson.” So I got an email back from him a couple of days later that said, “Thank you so much for the email. It does my heart good to know what I'm teaching truly has an impact on my students. Your 21 year old memory is pretty good. The three givens are a point, a line, and a plane. Let me know how your talk went, I'm sure it's going to be excellent given that it was related to math. Thanks Mr. Turner.” So what he said, and I want to kind of sum this up. What he said is basically, if you look at geometry, I remember him always talking about Euclidean geometry and about how cool Euclid was and all these things. He was so excited. But he said all this whole theory, this whole science, everything based on geometry is all provable except for three things. But these three things are the foundation points and I can't prove these, but if these three things are true, if they're a given, then all of geometry works. If you take them away everything crumbles. He said these are the three things. One is a point, a line, and a plane. If we define these things, this is a point, this is the line and the plane, I can't prove those but these are the three givens. And based on the fact that these three givens, if we believe that they're true, all of math works. And I just remember when he told me that, how amazing…for me it tied so much to faith. If you think about faith, there are things you have to have faith in that we can't prove them, but if we believe in them then everything else great in this world happens because of that. So the reason why I knew that a point and line and plane were true is because Mr. Turner said, “These are true and because they are true, therefore all geometry works.” So for me, I was like what are the givens of my faith? Things that aren't, that I can't prove are true but they are true. What are those things? And just like I had to get Mr. Turner to tell me, “Hey Russell, these are the three givens.” I need somebody who I trust to tell me that these givens are true. And it can't be someone here on this earth, because people here on earth are persuaded, they have all sorts of different agendas and ideas and things like that, it has to be somebody eternal. It has to be God. So for me, I figured out these were the three givens of my faith. And if these three things are true, then everything else amazing in my life became amazing because of these three things. And I can't prove them, the only way you can prove them is to go and ask God, which is my message of this entire podcast. I will never try to logically convince you of anything. What I'm going to do is try to inspire you and get you excited to go ask God yourself. And if I was looking at what I should be asking him, what do I need to know is true? It's these three givens. Because after you understand these and you believe these and he has told you they are true, everything else in your life will be built around it and you'll have absolute certainty, absolute confidence. You'll know exactly where you came from, why you're here and where you're going. So these are my three givens, and if you're taking notes, write these down, because these are the foundation of my faith and of your faith, and I believe that they are true. Not because I convinced myself or I can logically prove it to you, but because God has told me. These are things that he will tell you as well if you will ask him. Alright, so number one, my first given is there is a God and he loves us. That's given number one. Given number two is that Jesus is the Christ. And given number three is that the Book of Mormon is true. Those are my three givens. Now again, I know this not because of myself, but because I asked God and I received revelation directly from him on all three of these and I'll talk about that as we kind of go on. But the coolest thing for you, as I share these things with you, don't take my word for it. Please don't take my word for it. I want you to hear it and then I want you to see the pattern of how I got my answer and then I want you to take action and I want you to follow that pattern as well. That's my only goal from this. But if these three things are true, I promise you, the plan of happiness, everything else that comes from that is all true. But these are the three givens that I can't prove. Just like in geometry, I can't prove a point, a line, or a plane, but because they are true, this amazing thing called geometry is possible. Alright, let's hear that once again. Number one, there's a God and he loves us. Number two, Jesus is the Christ. Number three, the Book of Mormon is true. Like I said, depending on where you are coming at this, if you're already Christian you probably already believe in number one and two. If you're Mormon you probably believe one, two and three. If you were Mormon at one time and you've left the faith, you probably don't believe number three, and maybe don't believe number two. I know you're all in different spots. So my encouragement to you is to look at this, this is the foundation of faith. You need to know, not based on your own opinion, based on God's opinion. What's his opinion on these three things? Figure it out and everything else will change for you. Alright, let's jump into this. Given number one, there is a God and he loves us. For me, when I was born into this world I just assumed there was a God and I think most people do as well. I fast forward 19 years of my life and I had a chance to go on a mission, I went to Cherry Hill, New Jersey and I had one of the most amazing experiences of my life. It was scary, it was fun, it was exciting. But it was pretty cool. I had a chance to knock on doors and teach people about God and about Christ and all these amazing things. And what was interesting is as I was going out there I assumed everyone believed in God too. We all believe in God. And as I started knocking on doors and talking to people I found out really quickly that a lot of people don't. In fact, not only do some people not believe in God, they don't believe in Christ, they don't believe in God, they don't even believe in anything. And as I met atheists and agnostics and other people out there, I was like, huh. And some of them had very convincing arguments, they were very logical. I was like, huh. As you're going door by door by door trying to explain to people about this amazing thing that's happened and they're coming back saying, “That doesn't even matter because there is no God.” After a while I started wondering, is there a God? I always assumed there was, but I don't know. All the sudden I got scared. I'm trying to convince people that the Book of Mormon is true and that Jesus Christ is our Savior and that his church is back here on earth, but I started thinking, but what if there's no God? If there's no God this whole thing collapses. This is one of the givens. If this isn't true then everything else disappears. I realized, I gotta know if this is true. I have to know there's a God. I assume there is, but how do I know? I need to know this, I can't just go on blind faith. I need to know. So for me, it started this study of trying to understand who God was. I'm sure we'll have episodes that will go deeper into that, but it's outside the concept of today. Today, I needed to know that. So I started studying the Book of Mormon, which we'll talk about why it's such an amazing book here in a minute. But in the book there's a really cool story. There's a guy named Alma who is a prophet and he had a fight with this guy named Korihor who's an antichrist. And it's in Alma chapter 30, verse 44, if anyone wants to read it. But Korihor was someone who did not believe in God and he came out and he started preaching to all these people, laughing, “Why are you following the prophets? Why are you caring about a God? There's this guy named Jesus who's supposed to be coming in the future, I'm sure it's going to happen. They're just telling you this stuff about God because they want to control you and they're trying to take away your agency and all these things and that's why they're doing this.” And Alma the prophet was like, “What are you talking about? You know that's not true. We don't make any money from this, we're volunteering our time, we're working with our own hands to pay for our own things. We're here to help each other and God is true.” And they started fighting back and forth and finally Korihor comes back to Alma and says, “Well if you would show me a sign, if you just show me a sign, then I will believe you.” And Alma, I'm sure, I'm envisioning this situation, he's debating with this antichrist, I'm sure that he had the situation where the antichrist is looking like, “Are you serious? You need a sign?” and this is what Alma said in Alma 30:44, chapter 30, verse 44 he said, “Thou hast had signs enough, will you tempt your God? Will you say show unto me a sign when you have a testimony of all these, they brethren, all the holy prophets and the scriptures are laid before thee and all things to note that there is a God. Yea, even the earth and all the things upon the face of it, yea and it's motion and all the planets which move in the regular form, do witness that there is a supreme creator.” Alma is basically saying, “Look around. Do you not see what's happening around us? There's a sun that comes up every morning and goes down. There's a moon and all these things. There's breath and life and plants and animals and birth and death. These amazing creations had to have a creations had to have a creator. Plus you have these scriptures in front of you. These scriptures, these are people who have met God, who have talked to God, who have written stories on it. You have all the testimony of your brethren, people who have interacted with him. What more do you need? Do you honestly need a sign?” And Korihor came back and said, “Yeah, I need a sign. If you show me a sign, then I'll believe you.” And I just imagine Alma, letting out a sigh of breath and be like, “Alright, well if the Lord wants it done, he'll send you a sign.” What happened to Korihor is he was then struck dumb. He lost his voice and they came back to him and said, “Okay, there's your sign. What do you think?” and he can't talk and he's freaking out and starts writing down on a piece of paper, “You're right. I can't talk. Only God could have done this, I believe there's a God now. Take this away, I want to be able to speak again.” And they're like, “No, if you get your voice back, you're going to continue to go down the same path.” He said, “No, it wasn't me. Satan came and convinced me to do these things and taught me the words to say, but let me talk again and I promise I'll come back and I'll do good now.” And Alma basically said, “Well, it's up to God. If he wants to give it back he can, but it's kind of up to him.” And the Lord didn't give him his voice back. So Korihor ended up going house to house begging for food and eventually it says he was trodden down and died. I don't know what the word trodden means, in my head it's horses stomping on somebody, but I don't know if that's true or not. All I know is he went through a horrible experience and then he died. As I read that, I just started thinking. I'm looking around me and realizing he's right, Alma was right. All things denote that there is a God. The fact that I live here on this earth, that 37 years ago I was born, I had these amazing parents, I grew up, eventually I was able to find my wife and now we have kids. Just all these things that are happening, all things denote that there is a God. And as I started looking around, in the scriptures they talk about the plan of happiness, and I look as I followed this plan, which some say was made up or invented or whatever. Korihor would have said it was created because they're trying to hold you back. I look at the more I follow this plan of happiness, the more I do what's right, the more I follow these commandments of God, the more that I try to be like him and try to do what he would want me to do, the more happy I've been in my life. And as I've deviated from that path, that's when I feel, the times in my life that have been dark, that I haven't felt happiness. As I look at our creator, look at our father and the plan he's created for us and as I followed it, it is what's gotten me to know that there is a God. I think for all of us that needs to be the first question. We have to know beyond ourselves. If we pray, when we pray and then receive an answer, that's how you know there's a God. Someone told me there's this guy you gotta meet, I don't know who he is, but as soon as I meet him the first time and I hear his voice, I know that he's real. So for me, I started praying on my mission, begging and pleading for answers, as I heard his voice, I knew that he was real. I testify to you that there is a God in the heavens. He is literally our father. I know that he loves us, he cares about us more than we will ever know or understand while we're here on this earth. But number one is true. There is a God and he loves us. I don't know that because I was logically convinced but because I have heard his voice, and I know that you can hear his voice too, but you gotta ask. You gotta pray and when you do that he'll respond to you. So that's given number one, there is a God and he loves us. Alright given number two, Jesus is the Christ. Once again, this is something that in my naivety, growing up in Utah, I assumed everyone believed in Christ. You know, I thought the argument was “Is the Book of Mormon a real thing?” I thought that was the question. But for the majority of the world, they aren't even Christians. I look at today, I was in 8th grade 24 years ago, so I was on my mission almost 20 years ago and back then as I was knocking on doors in New Jersey I was shocked at how many people didn't believe in Christ. But today it's even worse. Christianity, 20 years ago I would have assumed the majority of people thought they were Christians. But today with Facebook and with my interaction with literally thousands and thousands of people around the globe, most people I don't think consider themselves Christians anymore. I have people come to me and say, “Russell, are you Christian?” I say, “Of course I am.” And they're like, “Man, I can tell.” I'm like, 20 years ago I think everyone identified themselves as Christian. It's shocking to me that they're not. So because of that, it gets even more complicated now. We need to know that. So the question is how do you know that Jesus is the Christ? That's a good argument. How do we know that? There's a book that talks about it, we've seen some movies on TV but how do we know? Believing is good, but we can know. When you know it becomes a firm foundation as opposed to just kind of hope. So on my mission, I'm out there tracting and we're knocking on doors and meeting people, and again up to that point in my life I just assumed that everyone believed in Christ. Or that the majority of people did. And we went to this lady's house and knocked on her door and she let us in and we had the chance to teach her. For her, her daughter had actually passed away in a car wreck three or four years earlier. And she was, you could see she was still really, really struggling with it. We go back and have these discussions with her and talk about life and again, going through the three questions, where do we come from, why are we here, and where are we going. And helping her understand that, not just from her own perspective but from her daughter's. “Where did you and your daughter come from? What's the purpose here? Her dying early? Where is she going now?” and helping her understand that. We taught her for a bunch of weeks and then one day she called us or we went by her house, I can't remember exactly what the situation was. But she said, “Hey, there are these debates that are going to be on TV. It's a Christian/Muslim debate and I want you guys to be here to help support me as I'm watching this.” As missionaries, normally we don't watch TV, maybe it wasn't the right thing for us to watch, but I thought you know this is an investigator that we're working with and I was kind of fascinated. I hadn't met a lot of Muslims up to that point. I didn't know what they believed and I was curious. I wanted to see this debate happen. So we went to her house and she turned on the TV and we had a chance to watch this debate. And what's cool is there was a Christian and there was a Muslim and each of them had a chance to come up and present to the world what they believe. And everything's obviously very logically based. But it was fascinating watching this debate as they're going back and forth and back and forth.They keep taking turns and like, tag teaming each other. And I remember watching, I think we watched about three hours. And when these debates ended I was sitting there just fascinated because I learned so much about Muslims and what they believe and what the core sect of Christianity believes and all sorts of things. I remember afterwards the investigator is like, “Oh yeah, that Christian guy destroyed the Muslim.” And I started thinking, and as I was listening, I didn't feel the same way. I felt very strong that the Muslim guy had a lot stronger foundation he was on. And as the Muslim guy kept attacking the Christian guy in these debates, what he kept coming back to, he said, “Why do you guys believe Christ is the savior?” and the Christian guy said, “Because it says it in the bible.” And the Muslim guy would come back and say, “You have one witness. You can't rely everything on this one witness. The Muslim believe because we have witness of this and this and there's multiple people and sources and stuff showing that this is true. Right now you're relying on the Bible saying the Bible says that Jesus is the Christ, therefore it is true. But what makes you believe the Bible's true? What if it's not? What if it's….” And he kept attacking. And what was funny and interesting to me, what'd he say, he said, “You guys say that the Bible is the word of God because it says it's the word of God. There's only one testament, there for it can't be true.” That's what the Muslim guy kept saying. And as I was hearing that I was like, he's right. What's the proof? I love the Bible, more than most people. In fact, I have tons of Christians be like, “Well you've never read the Bible.” I'm like, “Have you?” and they're like, “No.” and I'm like, “Well I actually have. And I actually really enjoy it.” So it's funny, when they tell me that and very few of them have actually read it. Yes, I have read the Bible, I love it, it's amazing. But it's one testament. And I started smiling as I was explaining to this woman, I said, “Look, the Christian guy didn't have a lot to stand on because he had this one testament. If he had another testament, if there was another section of the world, if there were other people in a different part of the world who saw Christ, who saw the wounds in his hands and his feet, and would say, yes we saw him. Then the Christians would have won instantly because that was the argument.” But I know if I would have went to that Christian debater and I would have said, “Hey dude, you're awesome. I have this really cool book it's called The Book of Mormon, it's another testament of Jesus Christ.” He would have said, “You're evil, get that away from me.” And I say, “No, you don't understand. You have this amazing book called the Bible, it's the people in Jerusalem. They saw Christ, he came to them after he was resurrected and they saw the wounds in his hands and his feet. And they said, Jesus is the Christ. And it's true, I believe it. But the problem is it's one testament. You don't know. If there's a car wreck on the side of the road and this horrible accident happens and there's one witness and then you go to court and the guy's like, ‘this is what happened.' It doesn't stand up very strong, but there's three or four people, all who have the same testimony saying, ‘Yeah, that is actually what happened.' Then guess what happens? Suddenly it becomes a very strong case. Look, there's three people, different situations, different parts of life, who all said the same thing, therefore it's probably true.” “So the Book of Mormon, what it is, it's these people in ancient America, the same time that Christ was in Jerusalem and he was crucified and he died and then came back and they saw the wounds in his hands. Then he ascended up into heaven and then he came to the other side of the globe, to the Americas. And this is before they had cell phones or fax machines or post offices or even boats for crying out loud that could get there. He came to the other side of the world, came to them and said, ‘Hey you guys, my name is Jesus Christ, your prophets talked about me as well. Feel the wounds in my hands and my feet. I was just crucified, I did what your prophets have been talking about. Feel the wounds in my hands and my feet.' And they did, and they wrote these things down, and that's what the Book of Mormon is.” “It's an ancient record of people who lived the same time that Christ was in Jerusalem, but after Christ was crucified, after he left there, he came to the people in America and they saw the same thing.Now we have these two books from two separate sides of the world, two witnesses of Christ saying, ‘yes, he did die and he did rise again.” And I as I started looking at it from that lens, I said, that is the power. That is what makes, that's why the Book of Mormon is so essential. It's the second testimony, it's the second witness of Jesus Christ. It was just fascinating to me. But after we left that discussion I went back and kept thinking, I believe Christ is the savior and we have these two different witnesses, but I've never even asked. I've never asked God. I assumed it was true but how am I supposed to go tell people the Jesus is the Christ if I don't know that? What if this guy that was the Muslim debating guy was right? And I remember I was scared by that. I remember towards the end of my mission I was reading the New Testament, and I wanted to read it chronologically because I wanted to hear the stories in the order. So Matthew, Mark, Luke, and John if you've read them, Matthew tells the whole story from his point of view, then Mark tells the story from his point of view, then Luke does, then John. So I found this table you could read, okay read Matthew these verses, then Mark, then Luke, then John. And it told all the stories chronologically. So I read the gospels, Matthew, Mark, Luke, and John, in chronological order and as I'm reading these things I'm hearing, I'm getting this beautiful glimpse and view of the Saviors life as he's going through his ministry and his birth, his life, his ministry and then his Crucifixion. And I remember the day, I remember the chair I was sitting in, in New Jersey, as I read about the Crucifixion and just the emotion, the pain, and all those things I felt as I read that. I remember as I finished those chapters that day for my study, it ended with Christ being put into the tomb, and then I left that day to go out and start knocking on doors and start talking about Christ. I remember being nervous for the next day, because I knew the next morning I was going to read about the resurrection. I remember thinking, I've read about it before, but I don't want to believe it, I want to know. I want this to be a given. I want to know, I want to be able to have this so strong in my foundation of my faith, that nothing could ever rock me, no matter what. I need to know. And that whole day as we were knocking on doors, I was praying, when I read this tomorrow, Heavenly Father I need to know. I need to know if Jesus Christ is my Savior. I need to know, I need an answer to this prayer. I kept praying and praying and praying. And the next morning I woke up and I remember being scared, and I knelt down and I said a prayer saying, “Heavenly Father, I need to know if Jesus is the Christ. I believe he is. I've been going out there doing and serving and taking this on faith, but I need to know.” And that morning as I opened up my scriptures and I started reading about the resurrection I felt it. I felt it from our Heavenly Father, and he told me that Jesus is the Christ. He's our Messiah, he's our Redeemer. He came not just to save me, but to save my family. He came to save my friends. He came to save the people that went before me, the people who come after me, he came to save you. But we have to listen to him, we have to understand. I remember feeling so much relief after that experience and being like, understanding at that point that my faith that I've been running with for so long, now I knew that it was true. And one of my favorite scriptures, no that's not true. This is my favorite scripture. My favorite scripture is in a book called the Doctrine and Covenants, and it's in Section 19 verse 16-19. It's the only time in scripture where Christ himself explained what he did for us. There are a lot of people who tell this story. You hear it from Matthew, and Mark, and Luke, and John's perspective. You hear it from other prophet's around the world. You hear it from a lot of different places, but this is the only time where Christ himself explained what that experience was like for him. So I want to share with you, in his own words. Doctrine and Covenants, Section 19, verses 16-19, he said, “For behold I God have suffered these things for all that they might not suffer if they would repent. But if they would not repent, they must suffer even as I. Which suffering caused myself, even God the greatest of all to tremble because of pain and to bleed at every pore, and to suffer both body and spirit and would that I might not drink the bitter cup and shrink. Nevertheless, glory be to the Father, I partook and finished my preparations unto the children of men.” As I heard that I was just like, man! Listen to how he explains that, he said, “which suffering caused myself, even God the greatest of all, to tremble because of pain. And to bleed at every pore, and to suffer both body and spirit.” That's what he went through for us. When I imagine that and visualize it, I see the pain that he went through, it's amazing. It was part of the plan, and we're going to talk in other episodes about the plan and make it more clear, but he did that for us. In a thing that we call the Atonement, it's a big word, but in a way that doesn't make sense to all of us obviously, but his suffering and what he did in the Garden of Gethsemane, and then what he suffered again on the cross, somehow made it possible for us to be forgiven of our sins. So that we can return back to our Heavenly Father, so we can live with him again someday. So we can live with Christ, so we can live with our families up in Heaven. And for me, that is so vitally important because I love my family. I love my mom and my dad, I love my brothers and my sisters, I love my kids, I love my wife. And if I knew that this life was the end, and I if I knew that I was going to die and it was going to be the end of it, this life would be miserable. What would be the point of any of it? But because Christ came, because he did what he did, because he fulfilled this plan of happiness and he became our Savior, our Messiah, our Redeemer, and he gave us the ability to be forgiven of our sins so we could become clean and we could someday return back to Heavenly Father, because of that I get to be with my family again. I get to be with him again. And it's the coolest thing in the world. I want to testify to you that I know that Jesus is the Christ. Our Heavenly Father has told me. It's not something that I doubt, or I waver, or I wonder. I know it's true. But what's cooler is I know that you can know it's true. You don't have to take my word for it, you don't have to take anyone's word for it. You don't have to listen to Christian/Muslim debates. You don't have to listen to anything. All you gotta do is go ask him. He wants you to know. He needs you to know. Because when you do that, it'll change your life. It'll change the people's life's that you're entrusted with, your kids, your family, people around you. But you need to know. So given number two is Jesus is the Christ. Okay, that brings me now to given number three, which is the Book of Mormon is true. Now, the first two givens are ones that most people inside of Christianity believe already, this is one that may be a little bit of a stretch for you. But I want to kind of bring you back to what we talked about earlier. It's not important for us to try to get other people to try to believe our opinions, the goal is to figure out what is God's opinion, what is actual truth and then conform our belief's to that. So for those of you guys who have heard of Mormons and you may be freaking out, I don't want you to, I want you to suspend your judgment, listen to what I have to say, and then I want to challenge you to find out for yourself if it's true. Because if it is true, this is the most important thing you will have ever heard. If it's not true, then it doesn't really matter. But you need to know. So with that said, I'm going to jump right into this. The Book of Mormon is the keystone of our conversion. Joseph Smith said that the Book of Mormon is the keystone of our religion, so what is a keystone? If you look at an archway, a keystone is that thing in the middle that holds everything together. If the keystone collapses or breaks the entire arch collapses as well. And I know and we know that the Church of Jesus Christ of Latter Day Saints lives and dies on the fact of if the Book of Mormon is true or not. Now the coolest thing about this, and I want you guys to understand this because this is just common sense, and it takes a minute to understand this. But the Book of Mormon is literally the key that you can use to figure out if anything is true. So let me explain how it works. So think about inside of the Church of Jesus Christ of Latter Day Saints, people always come up to me, “I have questions. I have concerns.” Or whatever, and I'm like, “Cool, what are the concerns?” And they're like, “Okay well, you guys used to have plural marriage, or you didn't let blacks have the priesthood for a while, or women don't get the priesthood. Or what do you believe about gay marriages?” On and on.. I get all sorts of stuff. And I always laugh, I'm like, “Okay cool. Let me explain how this whole thing works. So number one, I recognize your objections. You're telling me that you're concerned about blank, or you have questions about blank?” and they're like, “Yes that is my question.” I'm like, “Cool. Alright, so let me go find the answer to that. And the answer to all your questions you can find inside modern revelation. There is a prophet or an apostle who has spoken about every concern you can dream of. I promise you, you can find that, you can Google it. Go to LDS.org, do a little searching and you'll find the answers to your questions. They're always there.” So number one, I recognize the objection. Number two, I find the answer inside of modern revelation. You may look at that and say, “Okay, well who is this guy, who is Gordon B. Hinkley who said that? He's just some dude, so how do I believe that?” Which is a good, that is the right question. Why should I believe this guy? Why should I believe this person, this prophet or…you say they're a prophet or apostle, why should I believe what they have to say is true or that it even matters? So then the third thing to understand, the answer to that question, if that is true, it has 100% to do with whether or not we have modern prophets and modern revelations. So what I believe is that we have a prophet, just like when Christ was here he had 12 apostles, and when he left he called a prophet, 12 apostles, right. And we believe that same thing is on earth today. We believe in modern revelation. So we believe that when the church or people or whatever have a question that our Heavenly Father reveals those things to the prophet, just like he did in the days of old. He does the same thing today. So the question is, is that person receiving revelation? Is he really a prophet? Do we really have modern revelation? So the only way to know if that is true is to say, okay this is the prophet or the 12 apostles, or whoever the revelation came through inside of The Church of Jesus Christ of Latter Day Saints, how do I know if the Church of Jesus Christ of Latter Day Saints is actually true? Well, what is the keystone? The keystone's the Book of Mormon. If the Book of Mormon is true, that means we have modern day prophets living on Earth today, who receive revelation directly from God and if we have modern prophets on Earth who receive revelation directly from God and they said this, then that is God's will, and therefore we need to conform our will to what God's is. So that's it, every question, every concern, every doubt, everything, all hinges on this one thing, this keystone, this book called the Book of Mormon. So any concern you give me, it's going to be the same thing. I'm going to say, “okay, this is your concern. Here's the answer, but I don't want you to believe in that answer or not. All you need to know is that this answer came from a prophet of God and the way you know if that prophet is actually true, is if the Book of Mormon is true. If the Book of Mormon is true, then the prophet is a prophet and this is what God said.” So all you have to do is figure out if the Book of Mormon is true. Does that make sense? When I first got that, it made so much sense. So it's always funny to me because I hear people who are thinking about leaving the church, who leave the church, they always say, “Oh well, I have all these questions.” Okay, what are the questions? Because I have none right now. I can't think of one question I got. There's some things that I'm trying to figure out and understand, but I have no questions. And they always give me some question and I'm like, “Okay, boom. This is where it's been answered.” And they're like, “Oh well how…” and they have some reason why they don't believe the things of the prophet. I'm like, “Well what's your opinion on the Book of Mormon?” “Well, you know it's a good book…” okay, you need to understand that this is the key. It comes back to that. Is the Book of Mormon true? If the Book of Mormon is true, we have prophets on Earth today. If we have prophets on Earth today, then God has already told us the answer and you just have to believe what the prophet said. Now it's easy, looking back in time, if you're sitting there and you're like, there's this dude named Noah and he's building a huge boat and he came to me and said the world's going to flood, we should get on the boat. Looking back, we're like, “You morons, why didn't you get on the boat. The Earth's going to flood. Noah's the prophet, it makes perfect sense.” But what happened in real life? Everyone's looking around like, “That dude's crazy. Why is he building a boat? Why is he collecting animals? It's starting to rain but the guy's still insane.” It starts flooding up and soon the entire world's destroyed. That's where we're at today. We have prophets. They're here. I know it, I believe it. Heavenly Father told me. Now it's your shot to figure that out. Do we really have prophets? How do I know that? The way I know that is this thing, this keystone called the Book of Mormon. That's the key, that's why it's so important. That's why it's one of the three givens. Because if it is true, then a whole bunch of amazing stuff has happened that you need to know about. It means that God has restored his church on earth, it means there's a prophet, 12 apostles, it means there is revelation come from heaven. It means there's authority. All these amazing gifts and keys and things, that's why Mormons are so excited. That's why people look at me like, “Russell, why are you so excited all the time?” Do you not realize what's happening around us? Our Heavenly Father is here, living. Giving us revelation and messages and if we listen to him, he tells us what to do and I don't have to stress about things. I know where I came from, I know why I'm here, I know where I'm going and I don't have doubt. I have absolute certainty because Heavenly Father told me the Book of Mormon is true, therefore I know that we have modern day prophets, that means revelation is here, I know where I'm going, I'm not concerned. So that's what I need you guys to understand. I want to tell a story about someone I met on my mission, her name was Robin, and Robin actually grew up in Arizona. She was an anti-Mormon. Now, what is an anti-Mormon? Anti-Mormon is somebody who not only is like, not a member of the church but who is actively fighting against the church. So she was so deep into it that she would go out and she would proselyte, she'd find the missionaries where they were knocking on doors and follow them and try to save the people as they would leave. She actually had her own radio show where she had hours every single day talking about how evil the church was and how the doctrines were false and how we're leading people astray and all sorts of stuff. And she did that for years in real life. And then she decided to move to New Jersey. So she left her anti-Mormon friends and all those people and went to New Jersey, and when she was there she was just doing her normal thing and studying and learning. And one day she was like, thinking about all this stuff with the Mormon church that she would talk about, all the weird things we do and believe and all sorts of stuff. And for some reason, she had this aha. What if instead of looking at this, here's all these evil things, I'm going to look at it from their perspective, what if these things were true? Which, I thought was a really good question to ask. What if these things were true? What would that mean? So she started going through the different doctrines, “Here's this thing. What if that was true? What would that mean?” And she'd study and learn about it and she's like, “Huh. What about this one. What if this was true?” and just by changing her perspective it changed the questions and changed what she was searching for and how. And after a while, every time she would go down a different topic and say what if, it would open up a whole new world to her. And one day she was like, “I have a lot of questions now, I need to ask somebody.” So I don't know if she saw or she called, but somehow the sister missionaries in our area got a hold of her and they started teaching her. And I still remember because I was the District Leader at the time, and I remember getting a phone call from one of the sister missionaries saying, “We met this lady named Robin, she's amazing but she used to be an anti-Mormon and she has all sorts of questions, we don't know how to answer them.” So they started bringing me in to answer some of the questions too, which was really fun. And every week, every time they'd do a discussion, she started coming to church, coming to church, she had a whole list of questions. We'd answer question after question and they weren't the type of questions you'd normally get on your mission, they were the deep ones where you're like, “Wow. How do you even know about that?” Not that anything is hidden or secret, but it was just I didn't even know the answer to a lot of these things. So I'd be like, “Well let me go find out.” And I'd go research and study and ask questions and come back, “okay, this is what I found out.” And the questions kept coming and kept coming. And then one day I saw her, I was like, “Alright Robin, what's our question for today?” and she said, “I don't have any more questions.” I was like, “What do you mean you don't have any more questions? You are the question queen, you always have questions.” And she's like, “Guess what happened Elder Brunson?” I'm like, “What?” She's like, “I've been reading the Book of Mormon, as you know and finally I decided to do what you guys keep telling me and I prayed about it and our Heavenly Father told me it's true. I don't have any more questions anymore. I just want to get baptized.” And I just remember how powerful that was. It was kind of funny, her biggest concern, she's like, “Well, I want to get baptized, but my husband hasn't been doing this journey with me and he used to do anti-Mormon stuff with me and I'm pretty sure he's going to be upset about it.” So it took her like two or three weeks for her to get the courage to go talk to her husband and finally she said, “Husband…” I don't remember his name, “I'm thinking about getting baptized.” And he's like, “Alright.” And she's like, “Aren't you mad?” and he's like, “No, you're the one that hated the Mormons, not me.” So she was so excited and wanted to get baptized and what's funny, she was an amazing person, she was into all sorts of crafts and things like that and doing cool stuff, and she'd been going to Relief Society and all the Relief Society women fell in love with her and she wanted to teach Relief Society on Wednesday. But she only wanted to teach Relief Society if she was actually a member. So I remember we did the baptism for her on a Wednesday night and then did the confirmation afterwards and that night she taught Relief Society. It was just so cool to see somebody, for me, who had come from such a far extreme. One side of the extreme was, she was actively fighting against the church, she hated it. But as soon as she shifted her questions to “What if this is true? What would that mean for me? What would that mean for my family? What if this was true, what would that mean?” And then to sincerely search for those questions. And it's okay to have questions, we all have questions. But the only real question that we need to understand and know is, is the Book of Mormon true? And when she asked that, our Heavenly Father told her and then the rest of the questions went away, because now she knew. And the same thing is true, the exact same thing is true for you. I wanted to share that story with you because it shows just how big and how fast a change can happen when you're willing to stop and ask. So if you have questions, that's okay. It's not bad to have questions or doubts or concerns or whatever, but know where to get the answers. The wrong place to get the answers is this thing called Google. Now I am an internet marketer, once again if you Google my name you will see, for the last 14 plus years of my life I have been manipulating the search engines, the algorithms and everything to make money for myself and my businesses and it's done great. I also have friends who have manipulated the search engines in really bad ways and basically anything they want to publish they can. And they write and do all sorts of stuff and rank things, I mean it's crazy. So if you want to try to find answers going to Google, just know that the answers you are getting are from somebody who has an agenda who's putting in the time and the money and the effort to get that ranked where it needs to be. I want you guys to be fully aware of that, it's not difficult to gain the search engines for someone who's spent a decade of their life doing it. It's not difficult. So that's not what you need to put your faith in. The reason why the Book of Mormon is such a powerful thing is because unlike the Bible, if you know the history of the Bible, the Bible came and it's amazing and I'm going to do a whole podcast on this, but there was a time when nobody had access except the people who were in charge of the church. And as it started getting passed out, things changed and things were modified. And as amazing as the book is, you can tell that many of the plain and precious things have been taken away from it. Many of the doctrines have been hidden or distorted or whatever, for evil purposes. So you have to understand as you're going in with the Book of Mormon, it was translated once. The book that I have, this original one, one of the original 5,000, it went from Golden Plates, Joseph Smith reading it to somebody and writing it down, to going to a printer and it was printed on paper, and that's it. It hasn't been translated over a hundred years or centuries. It is what it is. So the question is, is it true? Robin found out. As soon as she found out it was true, that means we have modern prophets, that means all these other things are true. So for you, that's the key, it's the keystone when you understand that. It is true. Now I want to tell you kind of my, how I got my testimony of the Book of Mormon and how this became one of my givens, it became the foundation of my faith.  So I was in New Jersey, I was about 7 months into my mission. It was funny because I always wanted to receive an answer to my prayer. I had prayed about asking Heavenly Father if the church was true, and I never received an answer. I remember my dad, when I was growing up, he told me his conversion story and he was in the MTC when he got his testimony. So I thought, okay cool. When I'm in the MTC I'll get my testimony. When I got there, I started going through it and I didn't get it. I remember leaving on the plane to New Jersey, flying and being like, oh my gosh. I don't have a testimony. I believe this is true but I don't know. I need to know. In my mission I was going through and I was doing the motions, I was trying, I was praying and I found out later, I had to go through this trial of my faith. They always say, faith precedes the miracle. This was a trial of my faith and I had to go through there and I had to repent and I had to clean up my life and my thoughts and my actions. I had to become a better person and through going through this repentance process while I'm out serving the Lord, just really figuring it out. About 7 months into my mission I had an amazing experience. I had a zone leader, named Elder Franco, it's fun actually, during the last General Conference, I hadn't talked to him in 20 years, I saw him on Facebook. Someone in his family got called to be a General Authority or something. So I saw him pop up there. So I actually just messaged him. I'm like, “Hey, I don't know if you realize, you were instrument in changing my life. A huge change, a directional shift.” And he's like, “Really? What happened.” And I told him. We had this zone conference that he was running and he asked me if I'd read a talk and it was a talk from Bruce R. McConkie, and it had some powerful quotes, I'm going to share a bunch of them with you guys here. But he had me read this talk, I'm going to read one piece of this to you. He said, and I read this during the intro podcast as well. Bruce R. McConkie said, “These are deep and solemn and ponderous matters. We need not think that we can trifle with sacred things and escape the wrath of a just God. Either the Book of Mormon is true or it is false. There's no middle ground. Either it came from God or his spawn in the infernal realms. It is not and cannot simply be another treaty on religion. Either it came from Heaven or from Hell and it's time that all those who seek salvation to find out for themselves whether it's from the Lord or if it's from Lucifer.” So he had me read that part of the talk and then I sat down and Elder Franco stood up and he said, “Alright you guys, did you hear what Elder Brunson just said? We are either servants of the Lord or servants of Lucifer. And I don't know about you, but I want to find out right now which one it is, because either we're doing the right thing or we're doing something very, very evil. And we need to find out.” So he said, as a missionary we had a group of probably 20 of us, and he said, “Let's kneel down and let's ask Heavenly Father right now if the Book of Mormon is true because we need to know. He's called us on this mission to go out there and tell other people about this message, this thing that's happened, but we need to know if this is true. Otherwise, we could be doing, we could be serving the opposite side.” And I remember as he said that, my palms started sweating and I got these butterflies and I was so nervous because I had prayed dozens of times a day for the last 7 months and beyond, begging and pleading and asking Heavenly Father to let me know the church was true. I was so scared in that moment. What if it's not, what if I put my faith in the wrong thing. I started getting so nervous. Then we kneeled down and Elder Brager was the person who said the prayer. Elder Brager starts saying the prayer and he said, “Heavenly Father, we're gathered here together as a group of your missionaries, here to serve thee in the best way that we know how. But we have question for you, Heavenly Father, is the Book of Mormon true?” And then he waited. And in that moment I felt the spirit stronger than I have ever felt before or since, as Heavenly Father told me that the Book of Mormon was true. Then Elder Brager said, “Heavenly Father, is Jesus Christ our savior?” and again I felt the spirit so strong. And for me, in that moment, my prayer was answered and I knew, I didn't think, I didn't hope, I didn't believe, I knew that the Book of Mormon was true. I knew that the message that we had, that we were giving, was from God. When I knew that, everything shifted for me. It wasn't a hope or belief or faith, it was knowledge, it was a given. Heavenly Father told me and because I now knew that there was a God and he loved me and because I knew that Jesus Christ was our savior, because I knew the Book of Mormon was true, everything else became possible because of that. All the other amazing things that happened inside of the church, everything in my life, the entire plan of happiness, everything that's happened from that point forward in my life became true because that day the foundation of my faith became complete. Because I knew that the three givens were true. Now, I want to kind of speak for a moment on the Book of Mormon because I don't want people to dismiss this. I've had some people that I share with and they go, “Ah, that's great but you know, I've got the Bible.” And if you dismiss this, you are literally missing out on the most important message our Heavenly Father is trying to give to you and I need to try to clarify that. So hopefully the first quote here helped, and I'm going to kind of read part of it, but it basically said, “…it is not and cannot simply be another treaty on religion. Either it came from Heaven or from Hell and it's time for all those who seek salvation to find out for themselves whether it's from the Lord or it's from Lucifer.” It's from the Lord, there's a reason why he did this big deal, a reason why he came to Joseph Smith and told him to translate this book. It wasn't just that he was bored and needed something to do for the weekend. It's because there was a very vitally important reason why he needed this thing to be done. So you need to find out first off, is this from the Lord or is it from Lucifer. That's number one. Number two, this is some more quotes from Bruce R. McConkie, and those who don't know Bruce R. McConkie yet, he's my favorite dead apostle. He is amazing, but of the people who have ever been in our church, he's probably the biggest scholar ever. In fact, if you look at the triple combination that us Mormon's like to use, the footnotes were basically done by Bruce R. McConkie. The entire footnotes between the Old Testament, the New Testament, Book of Mormon, Doctrine and Covenants, like insane, that was basically his notes, the footnotes. There's probably nobody on planet earth that knows and has read and understands the Bible more so than him, I would argue. So I wanted to share that in context with this quote he said. He said, “I have an unbound appreciation for both the King James version and the inspired version of the Bible. I stand reverential awes, I read it and I ponder the wonderous words they contain. I do not believe there is a person on earth who has a greater respect for or appreciation for the Holy Bible than I do. Now I say this in a prelude to making these flat and unequivocal declarations. Number one, most of the doctrine set forth in the Book of Mormon far surpass their comparitable recitation than the Bible. Number two, this Nephite record bears a plainer and purer witness of the divine sonship of Christ and the salvation that comes in and through his holy name, than do the old world scriptures. Number three, men can get nearer to God, can have more of the spirit of conversion and conformity in their hearts, can have stronger testimonies, can gain a better understanding of the doctrines of salvation through the Book of Mormon than they ever can through the Bible. Number four, more people will flock to the gospel standard, more souls will be converted, more of scattered Israel will be gathered, and more people will migrate from one place to another because of the Book of Mormon than ever was or will be the case with the Bible. Number five, there will be more people saved in the Kingdom of God, ten thousand times over, because of the Book of Mormon than there ever will be because of the Bible.” I remember hearing missionaries say, “Oh yeah, the Bible's awesome, the Book of Mormon is a good book just like that.” And that's not the truth, the Book of Mormon is a better book, it's a clearer book, it's a plainer witness. We need to be bold in that statement. The Bible is amazing and if it had not been for evil men who have taken it and done things with it, it would be perfect. Again, we believe that the Bible is the word of God, as far as it is translated correctly. But because of the translation, because of all the stuff, and I'm going to talk about the history of that so you guys understand and have a very clear picture of what's happened, where it's gone, and where it is today. The Book of Mormon, though, is clean, it's pure. When you read it, it makes more sense. When you read it, it's clear. All of the things that were confusing in the Bible, it comes back like we talked about earlier, with the two separate witnesses. There's things that Christ talks about in the Bible, that don't make perfect sense, or the apostle, the things they talk about. You're like, “I kind of understand that but I need some clarification.” And because of those confusions we're always…churches start popping up, someone's like, “I think it means this.” And they're like, “No, it means this.” And they fight and argue and all these things happen. Whereas, the Book of Mormon is the second book, it was only translated once. It came from people on the opposite side of the world, and Christ came to them and told them the same gospel, so now we have both of these books. You read them together and it's like, “No, this is what Christ meant. This is what he actually said. Before translators changed and manipulated things, this is what the actual thing said, the way he gave it to people in America.” It's powerful, it's not a good book, it's the most important book ever. That's the first thing to understand. Number two, why do we have and why do we need the Book of Mormon? Again, I talked about this during the intro session, but I want to talk about it again. So this was Joseph Fielding McConkie, it's Bruce R. McConkie's son, he said, “Why a Book of Mormon? Because it's the perfect test of spiritual integrity. Acceptance of the Book of Mormon requires the same faith that was necessary to accept Christ in the meridian time. As he was opposed by false traditions and a corrupt priesthood, so the Book of Mormon is opposed today. The doctrines are the same, the opposition is the same and the courage and faith necessary to accept it are the same.” So how you treat, how I treat, how we treat the Book of Mormon, is how we would have treated Christ if he was here today. That's why it's so important. So you're like, “Oh cool, it sounds nice.” And you push it away, that's how you would have treated Christ. When I read that, when I understood, I was like, “Are you kidding me?” My attitude towards this thing, is what my attitude is and would be towards Christ. It is the same. The doctrines are the same, the opposition is the same, the courage and the faith necessary to accept it, are the same. Are you guys getting this, does that make sense? That's why the Book of Mormon is so important. Now, it's interesting, as I've had people that I love, family members, friends who have left the church. They always leave based on these things that aren't based on the three givens. They leave based on, “Oh I read this thing over here and someone said this about Joseph Smith.” Or “I read this and I don't believe this.” Or “I want to do this in my life.” There's reasons why they leave. But what's interesting is that they don't leave because they don't believe in the Book of Mormon, they leave because Satan has somehow tricked them with some external thing. Jeffery R. Holland said, “If he or she wants to leave this church it must be done by crawling over or under or around the Book of Mormon to make that exit. It is in that sense, the book is what Christ himself said it to be, a stone of stumbling, a rock of offense, a barrier on the path of t

(( Episode 29 )) Gender hardly matters considering the breadth of these remarkable testimonies. --- Support this podcast: https://anchor.fm/foreverlds/support

New beers! And we take a look at this years Golden Plates beer-related winners. Spoiler: we disagree with them.

New beers! And we take a look at this year's Golden Plates beer-related winners. Spoiler: we disagree with them.

Author Chris Heimerdinger: "What's intriguing is that some of our most profound accounts of those who saw, felt, and hefted sacred artifacts are from women ... I'm not the first to underline the contribution of women as witnesses of the Restored Gospel and the Book of Mormon, and I sincerely hope I'm not the last. There are many unsung heroes and heroines who've helped to build God's Kingdom in spectacular ways. It's a privilege to spotlight such examples and I will seek to do so whenever possible."

The reported details concerning the gold plates are consistent, believable, and surprisingly similar to many other archeological discoveries. Read at bit.ly/know403

Special Guest: Matt Dillahunty! * Email: Mormonism - Who saw the Golden Plates? * Why people believe stuff * I Have a Question! Theist superpowers * The "Without-God-I'd-kill-myself" argument * Email: Replace "Church and State" with "Religion and Government" * Red Herrings "You used a bad word, so I WIN!"* Debate between two Christians * Noah's Ark: Two or seven? * Gamer stuff * ACA Bat Cruise * Picking on Russell * Film review: 'Un Tout Nouveau Testament' * 'Cumulative Evidence' argument ** Copyright 2016, Atheist Community of Austin**

John is joined by Dan Greenfield of 13th Dimension to talk with comic artist Michael Allred.  Allred recently completed his run as cover artist for the Batman 66 comic series.  In this interview, he discusses how Batman and 60s television influenced his artistic endeavours, how he approached the assignment of cover artist, favorite cover assignments, and working with his family in the comics field.  Take a listen and enjoy.   Michael 'Doc' Allred grew up in the 60's and 70's and was surrounded with the best in pop culture and a steady diet of music, movies and comic books including the three B's: Beatles, Bond and Batman to the point of obsession.    So it should come as no surprise that he keeps a hand in film and music (He's the lead singer and guitarist for The Gear), but comic books have always been a seminal source of joy for Mike and that joy remains the main ingredient in most of his work.  Allred first tasted success in the comics field with his wildly popular MADMAN series, which is currently being developed for a live action film with filmmaker Robert Rodriguez. His earlier work from GRAFIK MUZIK was turned into the cult hit movie G-Men from Hell directed by Christopher Coppola (featuring Robert Goulet as the Devil). Other work includes Red Rocket 7, his history of Rock and Roll told in the context of a sci-fi adventure storyl the Madman spin-off THE ATOMICS and his magnum opus, THE GOLDEN PLATES, where he's illustrating the entire Book of Mormon.  Mike counts the secret to his success to be his wife, and creative partner, Laura Allred, who is is considered to be one of the best colorists in the business.  

In this week's episode, we chat with Brycen Deters of Golden Plates. Golden Plates is a solo project from musician Brycen Deters, playing off of the LDS faith as tropes for the band, Deter takes on the role of Elder Brycen, with the names of his albums and songs as references to the church. In The post Episode #233 – Golden Plates first appeared on SLUG Magazine.

This week Jim returns to talk Force Awakens (SPOILERS!), Han Solo, young Princess Leia, old Olivia Wilde, forever 2015, Hardcore Henry, and endless Civilization. Plus Craig watches Blade Runner, da guys read some-a dat Hamlet der hey, and more Sammy Pepys!

Rob Bowman joins us to talk about Mormonism and the seer stone of Joseph Smith.