Equipping Saints • Engaging Culture • Examining Claims
From Babel to Bethlehem—Or to Seattle? A Christian Critique of the Jaredite Ocean Journey I. Introduction: A Voyage in Search of a Map There is a particular pleasure in looking at a map and tracing a story. Children do it with adventure novels; theologians do it with the wanderings of Abraham; armchair travelers do it…
EARLY MORMON PERSONALITIES — NINETEENTH INSTALLMENT Emma Smith, Loyalty, and the Limits of Faith ❦ ⬩ ❦ Introduction: A Woman on the Ice In February of 1839, a woman stepped onto the frozen surface of the Mississippi River with two small children clinging to her skirts, two more carried in her arms or strapped to…
EARLY MORMON PERSONALITIES — EIGHTEENTH INSTALLMENT Lucy Mack Smith’s Lifelong Search for Assurance ❝ ❦ ❞ A Voice on the Frozen Shore On a raw morning in early May of 1831, on the wind-scoured bank of Lake Erie, a company of weary religious refugees sat huddled and despairing. The ice had not yet broken on…
EARLY MORMON PERSONALITIES — SEVENTEENTH INSTALLMENT William Clayton and the Records the Church Tried To Lock Away ❖ ❖ ❖ It was past one o’clock in the morning on Sunday, the twenty-third of June, 1844, when the knock came. William Clayton rose in the dark, dressed quickly, and made his way down to the Mississippi,…
EARLY MORMON PERSONALITIES — FIFTEENTH INSTALLMENT Sampson Avard and the Education of a Holy Vengeance Introduction: A Man Looking at the Sky On the last day of October 1838, a tall, restless physician stood near the unfinished temple lot at Far West, Missouri, and turned his face toward heaven. The autumn light was hard and…
EARLY MORMON PERSONALITIES — FOURTEENTH INSTALLMENT He Proved a Prophet Wrong with the Prophet’s Own Bible. ❦ ❧ ❦ On the warm evening of June 10, 1844, a column of nearly one hundred men marched through the streets of Nauvoo, Illinois, toward a modest brick print shop. They carried a sledgehammer. Inside stood a single…
Nice try, but no cigar (and its popular variation, “close, but no cigar”) is an American idiom that originated in early 20th-century carnivals. Fairground barkers handed out real cigars as prizes for winning games of skill. If a participant failed to win, the barker would declare they were close but missed out on the prize….
God Doesn’t Speak Jacobean: A Linguistic and Theological Examination of an 1830s American Scripture — ✦ — Introduction: A Strange Echo from Upstate New York In the spring of 1830, in the burned-over district of western New York, a young man not yet twenty-five stood at the head of a newly organized church and began…
Faithful as the Sun: The Brother in the Shadow ✦ ❖ ✦ I. A Horseman in the Illinois Heat The afternoon of June 27, 1844, sat heavy over western Illinois. Heat pressed down on the prairies, and in the dust of the road a wagon rattled westward, its young driver — a fourteen-year-old boy —…
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…