Equipping Saints • Engaging Culture • Examining Claims
Lesson 5 The Dramatic Journey of the Bible to Modern Believers Introduction and Purpose of the Study Our study series has been to strengthen the class’s confidence in the Bible as God’s Word before transitioning to a longer “real-life discipleship” study. The aim is not deep theology but historical literacy: helping believers articulate not only…
The Garden’s Oldest Whisper: How LDS Cosmology Repackages Genesis 3:5 ❦ ❦ ❦ I. The Architecture of an Older Whisper Of all the doctrines a religion must defend, the doctrine of God is the one upon which everything else turns. As Latter-day Saint Apostle Dallin H. Oaks once told an audience at Harvard Law School,…
A Theological and Historical Examination from a Traditional Christian Perspective ✦ ✦ ✦ INTRODUCTION There may be no claim more central to The Church of Jesus Christ of Latter-day Saints than the claim that the heavens, sealed shut for nearly two millennia after the death of the apostle John, were torn open again in upstate…
The 1894 “Servitor” Sealing of Jane Manning James: A Theological and Historical Examination ❦ ❦ ❦ Introduction: A Question Echoing Across the Centuries On a December day in 1884, an aging Black widow in Salt Lake City dictated a letter to the President of The Church of Jesus Christ of Latter-day Saints. She had walked…
Joseph Smith’s Golden Plates, and the Anatomy of a Repackaged Prophecy ❦ ❦ ❦ A Critical Theological Examination INTRODUCTION: A PROPHECY IN SEARCH OF A FULFILLMENT In the centuries since the Latter-day Saint movement first appropriated the twenty-ninth chapter of Isaiah as a foretelling of the Book of Mormon, no LDS apologist has felt obligated…
The Doctrinal Architecture That Keeps the LDS Church Alone Introduction: A Quiet Standoff in the World’s Religious Landscape Few religious phenomena of the modern era are as instructive — or as misunderstood — as the relationship between the Church of Jesus Christ of Latter-day Saints (the LDS Church, sometimes still called the Mormon Church) and…
A Theological Examination of Eternal Progression, Premortal Life, and the Eternal Presence of Heavenly Father I. Two Promises, One Soul: The Knot at the Center A faithful Latter-day Saint who has knelt at a sealing altar in a temple of the Church of Jesus Christ of Latter-day Saints has been given two promises that, on…
Bibliographic Context The pamphlet, No. 231 in the Herald Publishing House series (Lamoni, Iowa — then the RLDS headquarters), was written by Elder A. B. Phillips and printed in 1912. Phillips’s central thesis is that forty “eminent archaeologists and authors” had, by the early twentieth century, unwittingly confirmed the Book of Mormon’s narrative of ancient…
Image: A digitally enhanced photo by this author of the Gilbert, Arizona LDS Temple. A Historical and Theological Examination of the Most Sacred Mormon Rituals ❦ ❦ ❦ Introduction: A Cathedral Built in Seven Weeks On the second floor of a modest mercantile building in Nauvoo, Illinois, on the warm morning of May 4, 1842,…
A powerful 7.8-magnitude earthquake struck offshore Sarangani province in Mindanao, Philippines, on Monday, June 8, 2026, at 7:37 AM Philippine Standard Time (PST). The epicenter was located approximately 32 km west of Maasim, Sarangani (or roughly 8–26 km southwest/west-southwest of General Santos City), at a depth of about 33 km according to PHIVOLCS (USGS reported…