Christmas, The Israelite Tabernacle, And The Gospel Of John

(by Dan Peterson sic et non blog)

“In the beginning was the Word,” begins a Christmas story that we seldom read at Christmas, “and the Word was with God, and the Word was God. … And the Word was made flesh, and dwelt among us” (John 1:1, 14).

The Greek verb translated as “dwelt,” “skeneo,” means “to dwell in a tent” — which, in Greek, is a “skene.” So John 1:14 could be rendered as “And the Word was made flesh, and tented among us.”

This recalls the Old Testament tabernacle in the wilderness, a tent-sanctuary symbolizing the presence of God that was pitched in the midst of the traveling camp of Israel:

“And it came to pass, when Moses went out unto the tabernacle, that all the people rose up, and stood every man at his tent door, and looked after Moses, until he was gone into the tabernacle. And it came to pass, as Moses entered into the tabernacle, the cloudy pillar descended, and stood at the door of the tabernacle, and the Lord talked with Moses. And all the people saw the cloudy pillar stand at the tabernacle door: and all the people rose up and worshipped, every man in his tent door. And the Lord spake unto Moses face to face, as a man speaketh unto his friend” (Exodus 33:8-11).

The Hebrew word translated as “tabernacle” is “mishkan,” which refers to the place where God’s presence, his “shekinah,” resided. “And let them make me a sanctuary,” says the Lord in Exodus 25:8-9, “that I may dwell (‘ve-shakan-ti’) among them, according to all that I shew thee, after the pattern of the tabernacle (‘mishkan’).” John’s Greek verb (built from the root “s-k-n”) seems to play off of the Hebrew root (“sh-k-n”; in Arabic, the equivalent root is, precisely, “s-k-n”) in order to suggest that the presence of Moses’ portable temple among the Israelites prefigured Christ’s earthly life in a “tabernacle of flesh” among mortals.

The epistle to the Hebrews also links Christ closely with the temple — most notably when it compares him to the high priest of the earthly sanctuary.

“We have such an high priest,” says the author of Hebrews, “who is set on the right hand of the throne of the Majesty in the heavens.” He is “a minister of the sanctuary, and of the true tabernacle, which the Lord pitched, and not man.” Human priests merely “serve unto the example and shadow of heavenly things” (See 8:1-5). Into the holy of holies “went the high priest alone once every year, not without blood, which he offered for himself, and for the errors of the people … which was a figure for the time then present” (9:7, 9). “But Christ being come an high priest of good things to come, by a greater and more perfect tabernacle, not made with hands, that is to say, not of this building; neither by the blood of goats and calves, but by his own blood he entered in once into the holy place, having obtained eternal redemption for us. … For Christ is not entered into the holy places made with hands, which are the figures of the true; but into heaven itself, now to appear in the presence of God for us” (9:11-12, 24).

So John compares Christ to the tabernacle/temple, and Hebrews likens him to a high priest officiating within the temple.

But, through redemptive vicarious service in the temple, we, too, can imitate Christ. “The keys are to be delivered,” said Joseph Smith, “the spirit of Elijah is to come, the Gospel to be established, the Saints of God gathered, Zion built up, and the Saints to come up as saviors on Mount Zion. But how are they to become saviors on Mount Zion? By building their temples, erecting their baptismal fonts, and going forth and receiving all the ordinances, baptisms, confirmations, washings, anointings, ordinations and sealing powers upon their heads, in behalf of all their progenitors who are dead, and redeem(ing) them.”

What more Christ-like gift could we possibly give than to go to the temple this Christmas season, to help, in our lesser and derivative way, to redeem God’s children? If we haven’t planned to attend the temple during this hectic and foreshortened month, perhaps we should. It may require special effort, but nothing could be more thoroughly in the spirit of the season.

https://www.patheos.com/blogs/danpeterson/2023/12/christmas-the-israelite-tabernacle-and-the-gospel-of-john.html

Christmas Beyond Christendom

(by Dan Peterson sic et non blog)

I published this article in Salt Lake City’s Deseret News back on 19 December 2019:  “What is the appeal of Christmas beyond Christian believers?”  It was supposed to have been co-written with my dear friend William J. Hamblin.  But, to my deep and continuing sorrow, he had suddenly passed away the previous week, on 10 December 2019:

Landing this month at the international airport in Cairo, Egypt — busy gateway to a city and a nation that are roughly 85%-90% Sunni Muslim — you will see Christmas decorations everywhere. And such decorations show up prominently in hotels and public spaces well beyond the airport and the city.

In Japan, where estimates put the number of Christians somewhere between 1%-2% of the population or perhaps even lower, a quite secularized version of Christmas focused on Santa Claus and gift-giving is widely observed. Also prominent among Japanese Christmas traditions is eating fried chicken from KFC, where the statues of Colonel Sanders that stand in front of KFC restaurants are dressed as Santa Claus during the holiday season. Japanese people who don’t pre-order their KFC Christmas dinners can end up waiting in long lines for them, and could miss out altogether.

“Why KFC?” you might ask.

In 1970, just a few months after Takeshi Okawara opened the first KFC restaurant in Japan — he would go on to become the CEO of Kentucky Fried Chicken Japan from 1984-2002 — he conceived the idea of a Christmas “party barrel” containing not only chicken but, in some premium cases, ribs and stuffing and cake and even wine. In 1974, the promotional campaign went national with the slogan “Kurisumasu ni wa Kentakkii” (“Kentucky for Christmas”). Since, in the 1970s, there were few if any traditional Japanese Christmas observances, KFC filled a void.

In the West, too, Christmas remains by far the dominant holiday even among those indifferent to its theological background, including many non-Christians. In increasingly post-Christian Europe, for example, the colorful Christmas markets of such cities as Krakow, Dresden, Cordoba, Berlin, Frankfurt, and Amsterdam continue to flourish. In America, scores of virtually interchangeable Christmas-themed television movies celebrate “redemption through romance” nonstop through the season, with little or (usually) no specific religious content at all.

What can explain the appeal of Christmas to people well beyond the community of committed Christian believers?

First of all, it must be recognized that a superficial view of Christmas can easily be rendered much less threatening, theologically speaking, than Easter. Everybody can accept and celebrate the birth of a baby, whereas the revivification and eventual ascent to heaven of a crucified man is difficult to reconcile with a non-Christian or even secular worldview.

It seems clear, though, that there is a very great deal, even in the most watered-down versions of Christmas (as illustrated in those television movies), that speaks to the deepest longings of human hearts around the world.

Whatever our culture or religious views, for instance, the message sung by the angels to the shepherds of Bethlehem 2,000 years ago resonates with all of us: “Peace on earth, good will toward men” (compare Luke 2:14). Every Lifetime or Hallmark movie concludes with love and harmony, things for which we all yearn.

The practice of gift-giving reminds us of the generous, kind people we would like to be and among whom we would like to live. Think of the chastened and redeemed miser Ebenezer Scrooge in Charles Dickens’s 1843 novella “A Christmas Carol,” which, like the television movies that proliferate during the Christmas season, is not an explicitly Christian tale: The new Scrooge became both generous and beloved, and, as Dickens writes, “it was always said of him, that he knew how to keep Christmas well, if any man alive possessed the knowledge.”

The birth of a baby — any baby — is a moment of hope and the inauguration of virtually boundless possibilities, and Christmas powerfully reminds us of these things once more each year.

Finally, the image of the Holy Family, of the little baby snugly wrapped against the cold and lying in a manger, reminds us of the security and warmth of our own homes and families, whether as they really are or as we aspire for them to be. These are the kinds of homes and families conjured up, too, in many beloved Austrian Christmas carols and in the Victorian illustrations of father and mother and children — even Queen Victoria and Prince Albert and their young family — gathered by the hearth and around the Christmas tree, then fairly recently introduced from Germany.

We all yearn for lives of love, safety, harmony, warmth, kindness, generosity and possibility. But this is not our world. Christmas, however, whispers that we’re strangers here, and we feel that we have wandered from a more exalted sphere.

https://www.patheos.com/blogs/danpeterson/2023/12/christmas-beyond-christendom.html

Tapped Out: Criticism an Unsustainable Fountain for Faith

(by Dan Ellsworth publicsquaremag.org 12-8-23)

A year ago, popular Catholic YouTube channel Pints with Aquinas showcased one of the most important lessons in religious epistemology, and they showcased it on accident, the hard way. The host, Matt Fradd, moderated a debate between Jeff Cassman and Peter Dimond on the question of sedevacantism—the idea that at some point in Catholic history, the seat (sede) of St. Peter became empty (vacante) as the office of pope became occupied by people who do not legitimately hold that title. In the sedevacantist view, Pope Francis and some number of his predecessors are not really popes due to their departure from the faith.

I say that Pints with Aquinas learned a hard lesson because, in their debate, the sedevacantist Peter Dimond simply destroyed the arguments of his opponent Jeff Cassman. It was one of the most lopsided debate victories in recent Catholic memory, and it led Fradd to record and air a lengthy justification for his decision to continue offering footage of the debate. Fradd’s explanation was a painfully awkward monologue intended to answer the complaints of many pope-affirming Catholics who were left reeling by the exchange.

If that episode was in any way a hard lesson for the host and viewers, then over time, they seem to have unlearned the lesson. And the lesson can be plainly stated in a single sentence: accusation is the epistemology of hell. In the debate on Pints With Aquinas, Catholics witnessed the immense power of a prolific accuser in Peter Dimond. When accusation is the primary element of one’s epistemology—their framework for seeking the truth—the basic underlying assumption is that a person or institution is not a reliable guide to the truth if bad things can be said about them.

Most psychologists understand that human beings’ rationality is employed in the service of our intuitions and not the other way around. Our logic and reason generally don’t point us to what is true; they serve to reinforce things we believe to be true for non-rational, intuitive reasons. In a masterful presentation touching on epistemology, Catholic scholar Robert George emphasized this point, invoking Thomas Hobbes’ insight that “…the thoughts are to the desires, as scouts, and spies, to range abroad, and find the way to the things desired.” Hobbes’ insight was further affirmed by David Hume, whose views are then expanded in Jonathan Haidt’s book The Righteous Mind.

The power of accusation lies in its ability to poison our intuitions, which then leads our powers of logic and reason to be employed in the service of those poisoned intuitions. In the Book of Mormon, this process is allegorized in Lehi’s vision, where messaging from the great and spacious building leaves believers ashamed (a non-rational state of mind) and therefore unable to employ the same thought processes that had once been leading them toward the tree of life. Religious disaffection is usually a negative reprocessing of one’s past based on intuitions that have become poisoned by accusation.

Pints With Aquinas and other debate venues do their participants and spectators a disservice by offering the pretense that debates are a dispassionate exchange of “the facts.” As I indicated in another article, this is a typically male approach to epistemology, and it is misguided. Christian epistemology began with Christ’s observation to Peter that “flesh and blood hath not revealed it unto thee, but my Father which is in heaven.” Paul understood this and exclaimed, “…where is the disputer [debater] of this world?”. From the outset, Christianity never claimed to be a commitment to be embraced on the world’s intellectual terms—a commitment arrived at through the medium of debate.

Long predating Hobbes and Hume and Haidt, Christ pointed to the dominant role of intuitions in epistemology with his declaration that “A wicked and adulterous generation seeketh after a sign.” Sign-seeking always presents itself as a rational process for establishing the truth of claims that are offered in the realm of faith, but sign-receivers almost always demonstrate a marvelous capacity for rationalizing into oblivion any signs that they are given. When accusers engage believers and demand some universally empirically verifiable evidence for their faith, believers are correct to reply like a therapist: “Tell me, what’s really going on?” Because chances are, there is something.

For Latter-day Saints, this principle was perhaps best articulated in a 1994 article, “Text and Context,” written by Dan Peterson in the FARMS Review of Books. There, Peterson offers a long and thorough exploration of the reality of personal factors in shaping historiography, especially among religious critics. Countering the naïve claims of critics who often claim “objectivity” in their accusatory behavior toward the Church and its leaders, Peterson observed that “Human beings are not asocial, ahistorical, disembodied intellects. Clearly, considerations of the total personality of the individual advancing a theory, writing a book, or painting a picture may be entirely germane and legitimate in analysis of what that individual produces.”

Dan Peterson’s article has aged very well, as wide swaths of disillusionment have been cut through Christian communities by biblical scholars and researchers claiming “objectivity.” Scholars have formulated arguments against Christ’s resurrection and other elements of Christian sacred history, but much of the negative impact of the field of secular biblical studies could be blunted if people understood theologian Walter Wink’s insight that “People with an attenuated sense of what is possible will bring that conviction to the Bible and diminish it by the poverty of their own experience.” And it’s important to note that I first came across that quote and a robust discussion of its implications for scholarship in evangelical scholar Craig Keener’s wonderful book Miracles. In the flood of accusations toward our faith, ordinary Latter-day Saints are left without the kind of Latter-day Saint academic resources that we see among Evangelical scholars at Wheaton College and other places.

In discussing scholarship, I employ the term “accusation” very deliberately. When secular biblical scholars make counterclaims around sacred history, they do tend to arrive at some form of accusation, either direct or implied. Scholarly denials of the reality of the resurrection, for example, contain an embedded accusation against the early Christian community: they bore false witness about things they saw and heard. Scholars formulate sophisticated narratives that sometimes openly, often implicitly, accuse early Christians of forming a conspiracy to maintain a lie. Scholars in the field of secular biblical studies commonly refer to their craft as “biblical criticism,” and they are eager to explain that “criticism” in this context simply means a benign process of objective analysis. But in practice, their analyses tend to be rife with inferences that the ancients were not just misinformed in their judgments; not just creative and flexible in their approaches to historiography by modern standards; but outright dishonest and manipulative in their formulation of the biblical text. What are offered as benign scholarly analyses land in the mind of the average Christian as intuition-poisoning accusations.

There is an antidote to poisons of criticism and accusation, but it is not found in Matt Fradd’s address to his viewers after the debacle that was his debate on sedevacantism. His message was not a mea culpa; rather, he offered a rationale more along the lines of this is the price of doing business. Viewers of Pints With Aquinas learned the hard way that when you are in the business of accusation and counter-accusation, it is only a matter of time before the flood comes in your direction. The cost of doing business may be the poisoning of the faith of your viewers. And the antidote to these poisons of criticism and accusation is to see that these things sometimes have their place in discourse, but they are overrated as tools in truth-seeking, and utterly useless in leading people to God.

Among those viewers who love and support Pope Francis, one can only hope that they learned the principle that it is possible to formulate very persuasive accusatory narratives to undermine the authority and validity of good people and good institutions. We sometimes resist this principle, however, because it also applies in a favorable way to people and institutions that we disagree with. But it leads to a much more mature set of assumptions in our epistemology. If I believe my religion’s claims are valid, this conviction stands on its own merits, and can be stated without dwelling on the perceived flaws of other religions. Debates over theology and scripture and doctrine can be interesting and sometimes even enlightening, but they are a weak basis for faith commitments.

The other mature assumption is that we are all biased in some way. Returning to biblical scholarship, the claim commonly held among secular scholars that religion causes a biased view of evidence, and lack of religion somehow eliminates that bias, just indicates a lack of self-awareness. In the field of biblical studies, secular scholars offer numerous competing claims on most every issue, yet only one view can be factually correct. This means that biblical scholars can and do claim “objectivity” while developing vast amounts of well-researched, well-documented, peer-reviewed, consensus-shaping analyses that are 1) the results of personal biases and 2) factually wrong, opposing the correct view. It is a rare biblical scholar who is willing to plainly acknowledge this depressing reality about the nature of their field.

Plainly stated to my fellow believers, don’t be unsettled by accusations designed to undermine your faith, because it is possible to formulate extremely powerful and poisonous accusations against souls and institutions that are good, up to and including the very God you worship. Furthermore, don’t be unsettled in your faith by critics’ appeals to rationality because it is possible to formulate narratives of reality that are at once rational and completely false. And greater intellectual gifts don’t automatically equate to a greater embrace of reality: as often as not, the greater one’s intellectual gifts, the more sophisticated his delusions.

In closing, I hope we and our Catholic friends at Pints With Aquinas can internalize their hard lesson about the nature of accusation and its tendency to backfire when it is misguidedly employed in Christian epistemology. For a theological final note, I appeal to C.S. Lewis, who said, “If we insist on keeping Hell (or even Earth), we shall not see Heaven: if we accept Heaven, we shall not be able to retain even the smallest and most intimate souvenirs of Hell.” A good indicator of our yearning for heaven is our willingness to let go of souvenirs of hell, like the faith-poisoning intellectual idols of criticism and accusation.

https://publicsquaremag.org/dialogue/tapped-out-criticism-an-unsustainable-fountain-for-faith/?fbclid=IwAR2pHj_iWN9Bukvn6fitVfHGicWNSFMOzhjPdHF3qflDLImtqGaKpsYuHzQ

Twin sisters walked the road to baptism together.

(by Ellie Smith ldsliving.com 12-7-23)

Ariana and Briana Mendez share a lot of things as identical twins, but their conversion stories show how God sees them as the unique, individual souls they are.

Volleyball and Faith: Briana's conversion story

Briana was introduced to the Church through her friend Ryan, who played volleyball with her and a group of friends regularly at their local church building in Houston, Texas. One day, Ryan called Briana to tell her about relationship troubles that were plaguing him and asked her to come to the church to talk. Briana thought that they would play a few rounds of volleyball to cheer Ryan up. Instead, he wanted to talk to her about the big questions of life, and the pair ended up discussing the equivalent of the first four missionary lessons.

As Ryan taught her the plan of salvation, Briana felt a strong feeling rise inside herself, and she began crying, though she couldn’t explain why or even what that feeling was. Ryan suggested they go into the chapel to pray about the Church, and while Briana thought it was a strange request, she agreed so long as Ryan said the prayer. “He prayed out loud, and I loved the prayer—so beautiful. The Spirit was so strong and so present, and I loved it,” Briana says.

She continued to learn from Ryan, his girlfriend Kayla, and other Latter-day Saint friends she made. Eventually, they invited her to take the missionary lessons. She agreed and immediately felt the difference in her life as she began to learn about the gospel and read the Book of Mormon regularly. “I loved it. I felt like something was different, and it was. I knew that it was true. I don’t think I've ever questioned if it was the true Church of Jesus Christ,” Briana says.

Learning the Language of the Spirit: Ariana's conversion story

Ariana needed a bit more time to recognize the truthfulness of the gospel. “I was pretty disobedient,” she says. “I did some stuff that obviously I regret, but I’m very grateful because I feel like Heavenly Father let me go through those experiences because … it’s the best way that I was able to learn. And that just shows how much He loves me.”

When she saw her sister get baptized, Ariana decided to learn more about the Church for her sister’s sake. “If it was some random person inviting me to church, I would have probably said no, but because it was Briana, my sister, telling me, ‘Let’s go to the lessons with the missionaries,’ and because I love her so much, I agreed,” Ariana says. “I feel like Heavenly Father said, ‘I know how to soften Ariana’s heart.’ It just testifies of how much He loves us and how He’s so aware of us.” The way that God sent Ariana the gospel was unique from the way He sent it to Briana, and that testified to them both that He knows who they are as individuals.

Along with her sister’s help, the Holy Ghost played a big part in Ariana’s conversion. A friend of hers was receiving the Aaronic Priesthood in church, so Ariana joined the group in a separate room for that ordinance. As soon as the brethren laid their hands on her friend’s head, Ariana felt chills all over her body. Shocked, she tried to understand the source of the feeling and interpreted it as being cold. After the blessing, she talked with her sister, who had experienced a similar feeling but was sure the reason for the chills was something different. They asked the missionaries there about it and realized it was the Spirit. Ariana wanted to keep that feeling with her always.

“Why didn’t [the missionaries] hype up the Holy Ghost more?” Ariana asks. Feeling the Spirit was a game changer in her conversion process, and it has remained a constant source of comfort after her baptism as she has continued progressing in the gospel. “Because I haven’t had the gift of the Holy Ghost my whole life, seeing the difference it makes is so amazing. I’m so grateful to have this beautiful companion constantly with me, guiding me with my life, with whatever I need. If I have a question, the Spirit is always going to be there to testify of the truthfulness.”

A Double Confirmation that God Sees the One

As twins, it’s important for Briana and Ariana to feel like individuals. Repetitive questions about their ages (20) and who was born first (Ariana, by about four minutes) can make them feel like a joint set. When they both received their patriarchal blessings, they were able to recognize assurances from God that He sees them as the unique souls that they are.

The sisters received their patriarchal blessings in Spanish, but since they learned the gospel in English, they didn’t recognize all the Spanish words. Reflecting on the words and meanings has helped them see how specialized both of their blessings are to their different needs and circumstances.

The sisters assumed that they would be declared as the same tribe of Israel when they got their blessings, so it took a while for them to double-check and realize their lineage was through different tribes. “That showed how aware Heavenly Father is of us,” Ariana says. “We are very, very similar. Obviously, we’re twins. But it showed we’re individuals. I’m Ariana. She’s Briana. I feel like Heavenly Father was saying, ‘You guys are gonna be from different tribes because you’re individuals.’”

Feeling the pressure of being twins has been a lifelong topic for the sisters. “It’s something that we struggled with our entire lives because people are like, ‘Oh, you guys are twins.’ They just see us as a twin package,” Ariana says. Recognizing that God was able to see them for who they were underneath the “twin package” label was the cherry on top for the sisters. It confirmed that God was real and that He knew them personally.

Dual Desires to Serve

Both twins have been members of the Church for over a year now and are working toward serving a mission. Just as their conversions were unique, their testimonies and reasons for wanting to serve come from their individual experiences.

Briana is very aware of everything she’s been blessed with—her health, her job, her sister, and now, the Church. “It had felt like something was missing in my life. And then I found the Church, and everything just came together,” Briana says. “I know that I mostly have everything [I need]. But the gospel was something that I was missing in my life. Imagine someone who doesn’t have the many things that I’ve had in my life, and the gospel can change their life. So, I know that I want to serve a mission. I want to help people change.”

Ariana focuses on the happiness she’s found in the gospel and having the Spirit with her. That happiness is something she wants to share with the world. “Sitting with the missionaries and having the lessons, I just felt so much peace and so much happiness. It was such an odd feeling to me because it was like, ‘How can we feel this new?’ … but it was the Spirit there and testifying.”

Even after having been a member for a year now, Ariana is still amazed by everything she’s learning and feeling. “It’s mind-blowing that … this feeling is never gonna go away. And I just want everyone to know that same happiness and that peace I feel.”

While the sisters don’t yet have their mission departure dates, they are excited to go wherever the Lord sends them and help others discover the gospel. “This gospel is the gospel of change and of love," Briana says. "And I’m just so grateful to have it.”

https://www.ldsliving.com/twin-conversions/s/11906

“He brought heaven and earth together”

(by Dan Peterson  sic et non blog  6-25-23)

The latest iteration of the script for our next theatrical film, Six Days in August, arrived earlier today.  The film will focus on the succession of the Twelve to leadership of the Church after the assassination of Joseph and Hyrum Smith on 27 June 1844.  My wife and I look forward very much to reading it through.  We’re on track, I think, to commence initial filming sometime in August.

Which sets me to thinking about the relationship between Joseph Smith and his successor, Brigham Young.  Here are some quotations expressing Brigham’s attitude toward the founding prophet of the dispensation:

I feel like shouting Hallelujah, all the time, when I think that I ever knew Joseph Smith, the Prophet whom the Lord raised up and ordained, and to whom he gave keys and power to build up the Kingdom of God on earth and sustain it (Discourses of Brigham Young [DBY], 456).

I can truly say, that I invariably found him to be all that any people could require a true prophet to be, and that a better man could not be, though he had his weaknesses; and what man has ever lived upon this earth who had none? (Brigham Young to David P. Smith, 1 June 1853, Brigham Young Papers [BYP], 1832-1878. Historical Department Archives. The Church of Jesus Christ of Latter-day Saints.)

President Young’s lifelong veneration for Joseph Smith and his work was confirmed on his own deathbed.  Brigham’s final words seem to express anticipation, if not recognition: “Joseph, Joseph, Joseph” (Susa Young Gates, with Leah D. Widtsoe, The Life Story of Brigham Young [LSBY, 1930], 362).

I felt in those days [before joining the Church], that if I could see the face of a prophet, such as had lived on the earth in former times, a man that had revelations, to whom the heavens were opened, who knew God and his character, I would freely circumscribe the earth on my hands and knees; I thought that there was no hardship but what I would undergo, if I could see one person that knew what God is and where he is, what was his character, and what eternity was (Deseret News Weekly, 8 October 1856, 3).

What is the nature and beauty of Joseph’s mission? . . .  When I first heard him preach, he brought heaven and earth together (DBY, 458).

Joseph Smith has laid the foundation of the Kingdom of God in the last days; others will rear the superstructure (DBY, 458).

I never saw any one, until I met Joseph Smith, who could tell me anything about the character, personality and dwelling-place of God, or anything satisfactory about angels, or the relationship of man to his Maker. Yet I was as diligent as any man need to be to try and find out these things (DBY, 458).

He took heaven, figuratively speaking, and brought it down to earth; and he took the earth, brought it up, and opened up, in plainness and simplicity, the things of God; and that is the beauty of his mission. I had a testimony, long before that, that he was a Prophet of the Lord, and that was consoling. Did not Joseph do the same to your understandings? Would he not take the Scriptures and make them so plain and simple that everybody could understand? Every person says, “Yes, it is admirable; it unites the heavens and the earth together,” and as for time, it is nothing, only to teach us how to live in eternity (DBY, 458–59).

I honor and revere the name of Joseph Smith. I delight to hear it; I love it. I love his doctrine (DBY, 458).

What I have received from the Lord, I have received by Joseph Smith; he was the instrument made use of. If I drop him, I must drop these principles; they have not been revealed, declared, or explained by any other man since the days of the Apostles. If I lay down the Book of Mormon, I shall have to deny that Joseph is a Prophet; and if I lay down the doctrine and cease to preach the gathering of Israel and the building up of Zion, I must lay down the Bible; and, consequently, I might as well go home as undertake to preach without these three items (DBY, 458).

The excellency of the glory of the character of Brother Joseph Smith was that he could reduce heavenly things to the understanding of the finite. When he preached to the people—revealed the things of God, the will of God, the plan of salvation, the purposes of Jehovah, the relation in which we stand to him and all the heavenly beings, he reduced his teachings to the capacity of every man, woman, and child, making them as plain as a well-defined pathway. This should have convinced every person that ever heard of him of his divine authority and power, for no other man was able to teach as he could, and no person can reveal the things of God, but by the revelations of Jesus Christ (DBY, 463).

No man was to be found who could teach repentance and baptism for the remission of sins, with authority to administer in the ordinances, until God commissioned Joseph Smith, and sent him forth with his commandment to the people. Previous to that time, I searched everything pertaining to the churches; I searched high and low to find whether there was any such thing as pure religion upon the earth; I searched for a man that could tell me something of God, of heaven, of angels and of eternal life. I believed in God the Father, and in Jesus Christ, but I could not believe that the Church of Christ was upon the earth (DBY, 463).

I might have continued to study the Bible and all the books that have been written, and without revelation from God I would have been like the sounding brass or tinkling cymbal, having no knowledge of God, of true religion, of the redemption of the living or of the dead; I would have lived and died in ignorance; and this was the condition of all the inhabitants of the earth (DBY, 463).

https://www.patheos.com/blogs/danpeterson/2023/06/he-brought-heaven-and-earth-together.html

What only the Book of Mormon reveals about Mary’s perspective as the mother of the Savior

(from ldsliving.com)

Editor’s note: The Book of Mormon’s powerful witness of Jesus Christ results, in part, from the wide chorus of diverse voices in the book who testify of Him. Like the New Testament—which includes the four accounts of Matthew, Mark, Luke, and John—each of these different witnesses might be described as a “gospel.”

We can find the gospel of Mary, the mother of Christ, in 1 Nephi 11. Nephi’s vision of the “condescension of God” opens a window into Mary’s own experience of God’s good news. This gospel speaks to her unique experience of God’s love as a mother who was called to give birth to the Son of God and then had to allow that child to grow up, leave her home, suffer, and die.

This is an adaption of an essay by Rosalynde F. Welch from Seven Gospels.

What is Mary’s gospel?

A mother’s relationship to her child is a delicate thing, an ever-changing dynamic of coming and going, approach and rebuff, departure and return. My own kids span the spectrum from adolescence to young adulthood, and those comings and goings are the rhythm of my life.

I see in Mary’s gospel the same coming and going, the near-and-far rhythm of mother and child. After Mary has been carried away in the spirit, Nephi sees her again, this time carrying a child in her arms (1 Nephi 11:20). The angel says to Nephi, “Behold the Lamb of God” (1 Nephi 11:21).

The image of the Christ child in his mother’s arms, unique to Mary’s gospel, emphasizes the intimacy between the mother and her holy child, and thus it also heightens the poignancy of the sacrifice they both made in submitting to his atoning mission. This is the rhythm of motherhood: after coming is going; after nearness is distance. As the heft on her hip grew each day and time took its due, I think Mary would have known in her body what all parents know, you and I included: this is a child who will leave my arms and go into the world. Soon the weight will be replaced by an emptiness. This child is not mine, but the world’s.

Mary’s parental intuition, however, would have taught her something vaster than yours or mine. Having been told by Gabriel of her child’s divine identity (Luke 1:35), Mary would have had a motherly premonition of her child’s coming departure into the world that would have revealed something about divinity itself. This is not a Lord who remains distant and removed from the world, like a holy hermit sequestered in a sacred fortress. This is a Lord who goes out among his people.

I’m making inferences about Mary’s experience, of course, likening the scriptures to my own life in the process of “informed imagination.” For me, this kind of likening is valuable for the way it can partially reconstruct women’s voices in the scriptures, but you should take it with a grain of salt.

Still, what Mary may have intuited from holding the divine child in her arms, Nephi is shown directly by the angel. Twice the angel shows him the Son of God “going forth among the children of men” (1 Nephi 11:24, 31). Jesus leaves Mary’s arms to be among his people. He goes out among the crowds who visit John to be baptized at the River Jordan; there he is baptized with them and, like them, buried in the water in a rehearsal of their future burials in the earth (1 Nephi 11:27). He goes out among the afflicted, healing and ministering (1 Nephi 11:28, 31). He goes out to disciples who fall at his feet and supplicate him, and he goes out to multitudes who cast him from among them (1 Nephi 11:24, 28). He goes out among them all.

Nephi and the angel see these scenes as manifestations of the condescension of God (1 Nephi 11:26). God’s condescension is the love of Father and Son for their children: a love so great that a Father would send his own Son down to a world lying in wait; so great that a Son would descend from his place at the Father’s side to die among his people, first in baptism and then on the cross.

Mary’s motherly perspective adds an important nuance to our understanding of God’s condescending love. We often picture Christ coming down to earth from heaven and then returning again to the heavenly throne where he will gather the faithful, as Nephi saw later in his vision (1 Nephi 13:37). We think of condescension as primarily an up-down or vertical movement.

But I wonder if condescension looked and felt slightly different to Mary. She would have sensed that her son’s direction was also a horizontal out and into: out of her arms and into the world, going forth among his people. The vertical axis of condescension emphasizes the power and glory of the pre- and postmortal Christ, at the top of his trajectory, and the humility of his descent into mortality. But to my mind, the horizontal axis of his movement from Mary’s arms into the world emphasizes his essential solidarity with humankind, his willingness to be like us, among us, and for us.

These twin dimensions of condescension, Christ’s “coming down” and “going forth,” will prove to be important elements of the Book of Mormon’s witness of Christ.

Both Christ’s birth and his death express divine condescension in that they follow the twin patterns of coming down and going forth. More, we can begin to grasp the significance of Christ’s death from the very beginning, in the wonder of his mortal birth.

This is why Mary matters so much to me here. Early in their conversation, the angel twice asks Nephi about what he knows. First he asks if Nephi knows the condescension of God. Nephi answers truthfully: “I know that he loveth his children; nevertheless, I do not know the meaning of all things” (1 Nephi 11:17). Nephi understands that God loves but doesn’t yet understand how that love is expressed in Christ’s coming down and going forth. He doesn’t yet understand condescension.

The vision of Mary, bearing her divine child in her arms, has taught him that condescension is Christ’s coming down from heaven and going forth to the cross, and he answers the angel: “It is the love of God, which sheddeth itself abroad in the hearts of the children of men” (1 Nephi 11:22). He has understood the how of God’s love: God’s love is expressed through acts of self- shedding at Christ’s birth and death (and continuously before, after, and between), and transmitted through the hearts of all people.

Isn’t there something perfect and crystalline about this phrase, “sheddeth itself abroad in the hearts of men”? Shortened in this way, and if you squint, it takes the form of iambic pentameter, the favored style of Shakespeare and Milton. But it’s the word “shed” that really captures me. Although a similar verse appears in the New Testament, the idea of love being shed hasn’t quite made it into an English idiom (see Romans 5:5).

What kinds of things are shed? Skins are shed. Tears are shed. Light is shed. And blood is shed. This sounds like the scene of a birth, the messy and dangerous path by which Christ and his mother Mary agreed to bring the son of God bodily into the world so that he could live fully among us, one of us in every way except sin. And it sounds like the scene of a death: “This is my blood of the new testament, which is shed for many for the remission of sins” (Matthew 26:28). The love of God “sheds itself” through the willing birth and willing death of the child borne in Mary’s arms.

I think this is the message of Mary’s gospel. The condescension of God includes not only Christ’s coming down from heaven, but his going forth among his people. Jesus came to earth to share all of human experience, minus sin, with and among his people, not merely to instruct us from a safe place at a comfortable distance.

This truth gains special poignancy when seen from Mary’s point of view. Mary appears as a faraway, revered figure in other gospel accounts, but only here in 1 Nephi 11 do we get a glimpse of her own motherly perspective—incorporated, as we’ve surmised, as an element of Nephi’s vision.

Mary understands, as only a mother can, the personal cost at which the Savior, her babe in arms, will go into the world to spread the love of God through his ministry and his atonement. This, I think, is more than teary-eyed sentimentalism, though it certainly does move me as a mother myself. It’s a significant contribution to our understanding of the mission of Jesus Christ and the condescension of God.

https://www.ldsliving.com/understanding-marys-unique-perspective-on-gods-love/s/11894

Did you catch the inspiring examples of the 20 faithful women who labored with Paul?

(from ldsliving.com)

When we think of faithful New Testament women our first thoughts probably go to Mary the mother of Jesus, or to Mary Magdalene the first human witness of the resurrected Savior. While these two Marys are stalwart disciples, we can also find inspiring examples in the women converted soon after Jesus Christ’s Resurrection, women who were essential to the growth of the early Christian church.

Many of these women were well known in their communities; they heard Paul preach in the synagogues, by rivers, and in busy city centers (Acts 16:13; 17:10,16,17). A mix of Jews and Gentiles, they were powerful witnesses of Jesus Christ whose devotion can deepen our own discipleship. As we study the final Pauline epistles in Come, Follow Me, we can find great value by reflecting on their contribution.

In an informal social media survey of 254 church members, 99% said they knew something significant about Mary Magdalene, only 4% knew something significant about Damaris, and only 1% something about Euodia. This is not surprising given that the information about these women is often sparse. In this article, we will explore the examples of early Christian women who exemplify deep consecration, commitment, and conviction to Jesus Christ. (Note: In this article, scripture references come from the King James Version, KJV unless otherwise indicated.)

(follow link for rest of article)

https://www.ldsliving.com/three-lessons-from-the-faithful-women-of-pauls-day/s/11815