Equipping Saints • Engaging Culture • Examining Claims
Image: ChatGPT imagines the story from arsTECHNICA: On Friday, Politico reported that one of the country’s biggest data center developments had guzzled nearly 30 million gallons of water without paying for it. Even worse, the water grab came at a time when nearby drought-stricken residents were warned to restrict their personal water consumption, and some reported sudden…
Calling, Election, and Carte Blanche: The Crowning Ordinance Most Mormons Have Never Heard Of I. The Room Behind the Curtain Picture a Sunday evening inside a granite temple, the kind that crowns a hill or anchors a city square. The doors are locked. The visitors’ rooms are empty. The chapels are dark. Somewhere within, in…
Ninth post in the Early Mormon Personalities Series The Watchman on Olivet Orson Hyde — Apostle, Wanderer, and the Long Shadow of an Affidavit 1805 ~ 1878 I. Before Sunrise on the Mount of Olives Before the first light touched the limestone walls of the Old City, a single figure slipped out of Jerusalem through…
Eighth post in the Early Mormon Personalities Series Orson Pratt and the Logical Architecture of Early Mormonism 1811 ~ 1881 I. A Man on a Bridge at Midnight In late August of 1842, on a sticky Illinois night thick with the smell of river mud and prairie smoke, a slender man of thirty walked alone…
Seventh in the Early Mormon Personalities Series 1,500 Miles to a Mistaken Identity: Peter Whitmer, Jr.’s Mission to a People Who Were Never There 1809 – 1836 ❦ ❦ ❦ I. Prologue: A Cabin, a Cow, and the Birth of an American Religion On a humid June evening in 1829, in a log cabin tucked…
Look Up If You Must, But Look to Calvary First: Christians, UFOs, and the Empty Tomb A Christian’s Compass for the Age of UFOs, AI, and the Engineered Cosmic Gospel With pastoral framing from Pastor Joey Sampaga, East Valley International Church Introduction: A Mother’s Day Warning Today, before he began his message with a simple…
Seventh in the Early Mormon Personalities Series The Faithful Witness: How Hyrum Smith’s Loyalty Carried A Movement and Concealed Its Contradictions ❦ ❦ ❦ I. Carthage, June 27, 1844 — A Cinematic Opening The afternoon was hot and slow on the Illinois prairie. Inside an upstairs room of the Carthage Jail, four men in shirtsleeves…
Sixth Post in the Early Mormon Personalities Series Ink Beneath the Hand: The Strange Half-Faith of One of the Three Witnesses of the Book of Mormon ❦ ❦ ❦ Prologue: A Light in the Fayette Woods Late June, 1829. The light slants through the maples on the Whitmer family farm in Fayette, New York, dappling…
Fifth Post in the Early Mormon Personalities Series The Man Who Lost a Manuscript and Found a Religion ❦ ❦ ❦ I. A Knock in the Lancashire Twilight It began in the autumn of 1874 with a knock at a quiet Utah farmhouse, an interruption to the Pilkingtons’ evening devotions. The stranger at the door…
Between God and Joseph Smith: The Tragic Arc of Oliver Cowdery Early Mormon Personalities Series — Fourth Post Introduction: A Man Between Two Worlds In the late spring of 1829, somewhere along the green banks of the Susquehanna River in northeastern Pennsylvania, a young schoolteacher named Oliver Cowdery knelt beside a young farmer named Joseph…