Today we enter into 2 Nephi, which immediately raises the question, why is there a second Nephi? Continue reading
Author: benspackman
Joseph Fielding Smith, 2 Nephi 2:22, and “Death Before the Fall” in Church History
As many of my readers may know, President Joseph Fielding Smith (1876-1972) considered evolution not just incorrect, but devilish; he believed scripture taught a young earth, with no death of any kind anywhere before the fall of Adam c. 4000 BC. His key scriptural evidence was 2 Nephi 2:22-25, which he cited dozens of times in books, articles, and private letters. I want to explore and document a few related questions here.
- Does Smith’s understanding of this passage represent a clear and historically consistent Church position?
- Does Smith, in essence, overclaim?
Come Follow Me: 1 Nephi 13-14
For those of you who are new to the blog (and the stats suggest there are a few), check out my suggested reading list on the Book of Mormon.
Nephi’s vision seems at times to border on the genre called apocalyptic [link to all my posts and podcasts talking about genre]. Apocalypses came up recently in my first post on Revelation. The genre is important to recognize, because understanding the genre determines how we understand the information presented. Continue reading
Two MORE new videos: Dinosaurs, Babel, and more!
Two more! These also will be added to my media page, when I have time.
The New “Answering Gospel Questions,” Part 2: Historical Background
To understand why some of us see these new guidelines as so significant, we need to cover some intellectual and religious history which will allow you to “read between the lines” more. And please note, I’m under time constraints and very much in stark “historian mode” here; I have not taken the time to render this more devotional; suffice to say, one can— as I do— believe fully in biblical and LDS prophets while rejecting the fundamentalist constructs often attached to them.
Almost from the beginning, Latter-day Saints have operated on two loose competing paradigms of knowledge and “the world.” (I wrote a well-received paper on this for a conference in 2017; see here for more details, including the unrevised draft.)
The New “Answering Gospel Questions,” Part 1: Introduction
On Dec 18, the Church announced a new section, “Guiding Principles to Help Answer Gospel Questions.” This goes along with the updated “Topics and Questions” which include both the longer and older “Gospel Topics Essays” and the much shorter “Gospel Topics.” This is quite interesting.
Two new video interviews: Spanish, and Mormonism with the Murph
I haven’t added these to the Media page yet, but will soon. And more is coming!
Come Follow Me: 1 Nephi 1-7
These are the most familiar chapters to any Latter-day Saint, and I’ve literally spent weeks on them in Institute classes, going slowly and thoroughly. I’d wager many of us could recite 1 Nephi 1:1 from memory, and a good number of us in our mission language; not from trying to memorize it, just from having read it so much. Familiarity does not necessarily mean understanding, though. The following questions appear unrelated, but are clues to what’s going in in the initial chapters and indeed, all of 1-2 Nephi. And it’s quite different than what people assume.
Come Follow Me: Revelation 5-6, 19-22
Gustav Doré’s Destruction of Leviathan
Well, the end is upon us. It’s the end of the world/New Testament/year as we know it, and I feel fine.
Today’s chapters… today’s chapters, well. Let’s be blunt. If you pick up a commentary from a believing scholar who has spent his/her entire life studying Revelation, they are likely to admit that no one has any real clue. Just about every passage is disputed in some way by somebody. I am skeptical of the lesson manual’s ability to navigate us through this material, and I’m not about to hold myself out as any expert. Revelation to me is like Isaiah in the Old Testament; I’ve just never really had any particular interest. So, apologies to anyone who came to today’s post looking for the keys to unlock the universe. These chapters contain a lot of things that sound familiar, and a lot of things that sound crazy. Be prepared for lots of potentially crazy comments and wild doctrinal inferences. This is fertile ground, historically speaking, for rampant speculation.
Scrooge, Jacob, and Forgiveness: A Christmas Message
This is one of several posts I will update and repost each year at the appropriate season. This was originally a Sacrament Meeting sermon I preached.
Christmas is a season of generosity, of new beginnings, of babies, family… and ghosts of the past who haunt our lives and our minds. Sometimes they are of our own creating. Remembering them can help us change.
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