Equipping Saints • Engaging Culture • Examining Claims
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 $3.50 a day making tortillas. She has…
Image: Jesus casts out the devils. Artist: Julius Schnorr von Carolsfeld. Engraver: W. Am[l?]and, inscribed lower left. Source: Die Bibel in Bildern, Plate 191. Mormon Apostleship. In Christian theology and ecclesiology, the apostles, particularly the Twelve Apostles (also known as the Twelve Disciples or simply the Twelve), were the primary disciples of Jesus according to…
What Scripture, History, and Archaeology Reveal About the Church Christ Never Lost The Church of Jesus Christ of Latter-day Saints, commonly known as the Mormon church, was founded on several fundamental claims about the state of Christianity in the early 19th century. Central to Mormon theology is the assertion that Joseph Smith was called by…
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….
A Scholarly Examination of the “Translation” of Ancient Egyptian Papyri Introduction: A Text Under Siege Have you ever wondered about the authenticity of the Book of Abraham, a foundational text in the Church of Jesus Christ of Latter-day Saints (LDS Church)? Believed by some to be a direct translation of ancient Egyptian papyri by Joseph…
Photo: In February 1828, Martin Harris arrived in Harmony, Pennsylvania, to assist the Prophet. By June, the Prophet had translated 116 pages with Martin Harris as his scribe. Martin asked for Joseph’s permission to return to New York and show the manuscript pages to his wife, but the Lord forbade it. Because of Martin’s continual…
Photo: Joseph Smith, Jeffrey Epstein, and Donald Trump walk into Mar-a-Lago. The hostess quietly asks, ‘So… is this a business meeting, a sealing, or a plea bargain?’ “The besetting sin of religious thought is not doubt but credulity — the willingness to believe what we wish were true rather than what the evidence compels us…
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….
Photo: Jesus Christ being nailed to the Cross. Illustrator: Gustave Doré (circa 1885) A Comprehensive Biblical and Historical Examination of the Iconography of the Cross. The crucified Jesus stands as Christianity’s central symbol of redemption, forgiveness, and eternal life—a paradoxical image that has defined the faith for two thousand years. Yet the stark contrast between…
Photo: Google Gemini imagines Joseph Smith in a modern setting, “translating” a copy of the King James version of the Bible on the office copy machine. Questions of religious truth are ultimately matters of faith as well as evidence. But faith that is unwilling to examine evidence is not strengthened faith but rather faith that…