History – Page 3 – The Righteous Cause

Rome’s Journey Through Time: Power, Innovation, and Collapse

Posted on March 29, 2025 by Dennis Robbins

In the annals of human history, few cities have cast as long and profound a shadow as Rome. Its story is a tapestry woven with threads of legend, ambition, conquest, and innovation—a narrative that unfolds over centuries, leaving an indelible mark on civilization. The Mythical Beginnings The traditional founding narrative of Rome, a tale as…

The devil is not fighting religion. He’s too smart for that. He is producing a counterfeit Christianity, so much like the real one that good Christians are afraid to speak out against it. We are plainly told in the Scriptures that in the last days men will not endure sound doctrine and will depart from the faith and heap to themselves teachers to tickle their ears. We live in an epidemic of this itch, and popular preachers have developed ‘ear-tickling’ into a fine art.

~Vance Havner

Email: dennis@novus2.com

Before The World Was: A Biblical Examination of the LDS Doctrine of Premortal Existence
A Theological Essay from a Traditional Christian Perspective Introduction: A Different Starting Point When Elder Ronald M. Barcellos rose to address a gathering of Latter-day Saint students, he opened with a premise that most Christians in the room would have found jarring — had they been there. […]
Book Review: 175 LDS Temple Symbols and Their Meanings by Donald W. Parry
Overview and Purpose Published in 2020 by Deseret Book, 175 Temple Symbols and Their Meanings is a 310-page reference guide by Donald W. Parry, a professor of the Hebrew Bible at Brigham Young University and a contributor to the Dead Sea Scrolls translation project. The book draws on President […]
The Sealed Verdict: Speculating on the Mysterious Fall of James J. Hamula
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 […]
From Enslaved Saint to Murdered Man: The Tragic Story of Thomas Coleman in Early Utah
Brigham Young’s Race Theology and the Murder of a Black Mormon Prologue: A Body on the Hill It was the afternoon of December 11, 1866, and a group of boys playing on the rocky bench above Salt Lake City stumbled upon something that would haunt Utah’s history for more than a century and […]
The Unraveling Faith: When Latter-day Saints Leave the Church
The Shelf: When Faith Meets Unanswered Questions For many members of the Church of Jesus Christ of Latter-day Saints (LDS Church), faith is a carefully constructed edifice. Beliefs are meticulously placed upon a mental shelf, each one bolstering the others. But what happens when troubling questions […]
Hebrews 6:9–20 … ANCHORED: Hope That Holds (PDF only)
ANCHORED: Hope That Holds Hebrews 6:9–20 ESV EXTRA CREDIT – Regarding the Melchizedek Priesthood: Mormon vs. Christian theology. The Latter-day Saint Theology of Two Priesthoods The Aaronic (Lesser) Priesthood The LDS Church maintains a hierarchical priesthood structure that begins with what […]
Joey Sampaga Sermon: The Tragedy of Spiritual Blindness, Luke 11:29–36
On Sunday, March 8, Pastor Joey Sampaga delivered a message from Luke 11:29–36, building on the previous week’s warning about the danger of an outwardly cleaned but spiritually empty heart. Jesus calls the generation “evil” for demanding signs despite witnessing His miracles. He declares the […]
Two Million Stones, Twenty Years, One Unanswerable Question: The Engineering Mystery of the Ages
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 […]
THE INVISIBLE CIVILIZATION: How the Book of Mormon Describes a World That Never Left a Trace
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 […]
The King of Confidence: James Jesse Strang: Prophet, Pirate, and America’s Only Self-Crowned King
In the power vacuum following Joseph Smith’s murder in June 1844, a little-known convert named James Jesse Strang made an audacious play for control of the Latter-day Saint movement. Producing a letter he claimed Smith had written before his death — naming Strang as successor — he launched […]
From Dealey Plaza to Cell 9-South: Why the Epstein Case Has Become America’s New JFK
Have They Been Asking the Wrong Questions About Jeffrey Epstein All Along? Conspiracy theories about how Jeffrey Epstein died in his prison cell continue to flood the internet, nearly approaching those of the JFK assassination. Has there been an overlooked observation that Epstein was not a […]
From Atheist to Angel Whisperer: How A Fake Prophet Fooled a Nation and Built His Own Mormon Kingdom
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 […]
The Eyes That Guided the Bombs: How U.S. Intelligence Mapped Iran’s Military Machine
Operation Epic Fury, the joint U.S.-Israeli military campaign launched on February 28, 2026, struck over 1,700 Iranian targets within the first 72 hours, including deeply buried underground missile complexes, naval assets, command-and-control nodes, and even the compound of Supreme Leader Ali […]
Are Mormons Christian? A Righteous Cause Podcast
Part 1… Right-click and select “Save As” to download the MP3 audio file of Are-Mormons-Christian-Part-1. Part 2… Right-click and select “Save As” to download the MP3 audio file of Are-Mormons-Christian-Part-2. Part 3… Right-click and select “Save […]
Following the LDS Prophets — With a Little Help from Artificial Intelligence
Photo: When Quentin L. Cook told Brigham Young University students to “Choose truth when deception is easy,” ChatGPT heard him loud and clear—then chose neon when beige was easy. No truths were altered in the making of this image… just the color palette. 🌈 On March 3, 2026, Elder Quentin L. Cook of […]
Are Mormons Christian? The LDS Church Says Yes — Its Own Scriptures Say Otherwise
ChatGPT image: That awkward moment for Joseph Smith when the 116 pages of the lost manuscript come back annotated in red ink from Heaven’s Editorial Department. Seven Doctrinal Fault Lines That Separate Mormon Theology from Historic Christian Faith Are Mormons Christians? Let us be honest from the […]
Letters To A Mormon Elder: Chapter 2
Letter 2 — But it IS Translated Correctly! Letters To A Mormon Elder by James R. White Friday, June 21st Dear Elder Hahn, Thank you for your letter of May 26th. I appreciate the swift response, as well as the kind attitude with which you wrote. I realized in writing to you originally and […]
Lost in Translation: The Impossible Language at the Heart of Mormonism
Photo: A remarkable photo-realistic visualization of history, generated by Google Gemini. This detailed image vividly captures the introduction to the essay: a stout and earnest farmer, Martin Harris (left), having braved the bitter winter, presents mysterious ancient characters on a slip of paper […]
Prophets, Profits, and Secrets: Uncomfortable Similarities of Scientology and Mormonism
Place two of America’s most controversial religious movements side by side under the cold light of honest scrutiny, and what emerges is not merely comparison — it is a mirror. The parallels between Scientology and Mormonism are nothing short of startling. Both organizations guard their most […]
The LDS Church: Heavenly Father’s Wealthiest Subsidiary
The Vast Wealth of the LDS Church, the Doctrine of Tithing, and the Biblical Mandate of Stewardship Introduction: The Widow’s Mite and the World’s Richest Church Imagine a widow in rural Mexico. She is a faithful Latter-day Saint, a convert of ten years. She earns the equivalent of […]
Joey Sampaga Sermon: A Lesson from Luke 11:24-28
What happens to a person who turns from sin but never fills that vacancy with something true and living? That is the unsettling question at the heart of Luke 11:24–28 — and it is the question Pastor Joey Sampaga pressed with clarity and conviction in his recent sermon, “The Danger of an Empty […]
The Failure of the Nazi Analogy: Rebutting Morgan Freeman’s Historical Comparison
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 […]
Absence of Scriptural Precedent for Latter-day Saint Temple Rituals
Photo: Via Wikipedia Commons. Model of the interior of the Washington D. C. Latter Day Saint Temple. Taken on January 30, 2020, at the visitor center at the temple. This file is made available under the Creative Commons CC0 1.0 Universal Public Domain Dedication. Temples Without Biblical […]
Questions Worth Asking: Thoughtful Reflections on Latter-day Saint Claims (Index)
What happens when sincere questions meet practiced answers? Every year, thousands of Latter-day Saints quietly step away from the faith that shaped their childhood, their marriages, and their understanding of eternity—not because they stopped caring, but because they started asking questions their […]
The Psychology of Faith Formation: Examining Belief Development of Latter-day Saints.
A PDF is available of this essay to download and read at a later date: The Psychology of LDS Faith. This essay may be the answer to the question: Why are you LDS? Introduction The Church of Jesus Christ of Latter-day Saints represents one of the fastest-growing religious movements of the modern […]