The Trinity is a difficult thing to discuss, especially for non-Trinitarian Christians like myself. It seems as though everyone doesn’t understand it: it is a mystery of God. But different people seem to not understand it in very different ways. Some believe it’s one of the most beautiful parts of Christianity while others think it is completely absurd. I hope to clear up a bit of that confusion here.
Tag: For Mormons
Why Don’t We Build Cities Anymore?
The Church of Jesus Christ of Latter-day Saints used to have a tradition of building cities.
Under the leadership of Joseph Smith, we built the cities of Kirtland, Far West, and Nauvoo. Brigham Young oversaw the building of almost 300 cities across the Intermountain West. City building slowed dramatically after his death. We haven’t built any new cities in the last hundred years.
Why?
MORMON DOCTRINE by Bruce R. McConkie (1958) was an Aberration
McConkie was the most influential theologian in the Church of Jesus Christ of Latter-day Saints in the second half of the twentieth century. His magnus opus was Mormon Doctrine, an encyclopedia which attempted to answer all of the important questions about Mormon doctrine. It has been somewhat controversial because many of the answers it gave were wrong, but I think that it has a bigger problem. Mormon Doctrine is contrary to the way Mormonism approaches Truth.
Lehi’s Altar
When Lehi leaves Jerusalem, he builds an altar in the wilderness. The Levitical law forbids offering sacrifices anywhere than the temple, under the authority of the Chief Priest. Lehi’s altar shows that he is establishing a new church – not with different beliefs and practices, but with a different community and organization.
A Data Driven Recent History of Missionary Work
I prefer using data to help understand history. Noticeable changes in relevant data indicate that something important happened here – and you should figure out what that was. I am looking at the recent history of Mormon missionary work, using the data for the number of members, missionaries, and convert baptisms published by the Church of Jesus Christ of Latter-day Saints. Some changes are easily visible, like shorting the length of a mission in the early 1980s and lengthening it again or the age change in 2012 are immediately obvious. Others, like Raising the Bar and Preach My Gospel, can be seen but are more subtle. I have no explanation for the biggest change: in the 1990s, the number of missionaries and number of baptisms decoupled. Missionaries continued to increase, but baptisms began to fall. We have never been able to get to this number of baptisms since. If we could figure out how to return to the pre-1990 relationship between missionaries and baptisms, we would have hundreds of thousands of additional converts every year.
What More Could I Have Done for My Vineyard?
Jacob 5 is the longest parable in the Book of Mormon. It typically is interpreted as a fairly straightforward description of God’s interactions with His chosen people throughout history. Here, I present an original alternative interpretation.