Equipping Saints • Engaging Culture • Examining Claims
A Shockwave Through the Hierarchy On August 8, 2017, The Church of Jesus Christ of Latter-day Saints issued a brief, carefully worded statement: James J. Hamula had been “released as a General Authority Seventy… following church disciplinary action by the First Presidency and Quorum of the Twelve Apostles.” That sentence — understated and clinical —…
From Ramps and Sledges to Hydraulic Elevators and Human Counterweights: The Complete Survey of Every Theory, Ancient to Cutting-Edge INTRODUCTION: THE PROBLEM THAT WILL NOT SLEEP Stand at the base of the Great Pyramid of Giza on a late winter morning, when the desert air is still cool, and the plateau stretches toward Cairo in…
Illustration: Faith meets the fossil record. This Google Gemini AI illustration captures the introduction to the blog post, highlighting the irony of a modern religious monument standing beside a scientifically verifiable prehistoric excavation site. A Scholarly Examination of Book of Mormon Archaeology in Light of Current Evidence “Biblical archaeologists can barely keep pace with the…
Photo: From the diary of James Strang (see attached PDF). Via Archive.org. Publisher: Michigan State University Press. Copyright review: Public domain according to HathiTrust rights database. The Mormon King Nobody Remembers: James Jesse Strang and His Island Empire of Fraud The Blood of a Prophet and the Ambitions of a Pretender In the spring of…
NewsBusters: On MS NOW, Actor Morgan Freeman Compares Modern US to Nazi Germany As Freeman appeared to promote the series The Gray House about a group of Southern women who spied for the Union during the American Civil War, host Lawrence O’Donnell brought up the time Freeman read the final message of civil rights icon…
Photo: A lifelike image by Google Gemini depicts the Mountain Meadows Massacre — the September 11, 1857, slaughter in which a militia force composed entirely of Latter-day Saint settlers and allied Paiute Indians murdered approximately 120 emigrant men, women, and children of the Baker-Fancher wagon train at Mountain Meadows in what is now southern Utah….
The Weight of the Past: Presentism, History, and the Danger of Judging The Dead by the Standards of the Living A Historical and Cultural Analysis There is an old Latin legal phrase—nunc pro tunc—that translates roughly as “now for then.” In courtrooms, it describes the retroactive application of a ruling. In the study of history,…
Photo: Secondo Pia’s 1898 negative of the image on the Shroud of Turin has an appearance suggesting a positive image. It is used as part of the devotion to the Holy Face of Jesus. Image from Musée de l’Élysée, Lausanne. Via Wikimedia. U.S. work that is in the public domain. Why the Shroud of Turin…
Photo: Papyrus containing the diary of Merer at the Wadi al-Jarf exhibition, Cairo Museum, 2016. The Discovery, Translation, and Significance of the World’s Oldest Written Papyri A Find Without Precedent In the annals of Egyptian archaeology, certain discoveries arrive with the force of revelation — moments when the ancient world suddenly speaks in a recognizable…
Unraveling the Dark Saga of a Master Forger Who Deceived a Church and Murdered to Protect His Lies Introduction: A Church Deceived On the morning of October 15, 1985, Salt Lake City awoke to what promised to be a crisp, beautiful autumn day. Temperatures were expected to reach a pleasant 62 degrees under cerulean skies….