bps,
I am going to send you two post cards today since I am up to 8k
words. The last letter I sent included the talk from Sterling W Sill
but missing the last bit. I listened to that one last night and it
made me smile and laugh at a couple of points. I love techniques for
remembering things. His was quite unique, and in my opinion, daring!
I always wanted to use the hand as a way to remember something for my
students in science. I never did. So watching how Sterling W Sill did
it fascinated me. I could list all the fingers right now and tell you
what they stood for because I practiced as I listened last night.
Only problem: The concepts were not important enough to ever be
repeated by another General Authority. Back in the 80's I created a
way to remember all the prophets in order. I also created a way to
remember all the then current apostles as well. I can still remember
them. But the one for the prophets has been much more useful. “Say
Your Testimonies With Simple Spirits. God Saved Man. Salvation Links
Kindred Brethren. Hallelujah,Hallelujah,
Monson! Joseph Smith, Brigham Young, John Taylor, Wilford Woodruff,
Lorenzo Snow, Joseph F Smith, Heber J Grant, George
Albert Smith, David O McKay, Joseph Fielding Smith, Harold B Lee,
Spencer W Kimball, Ezra Taft Benson, Howard W Hunter, Gordon B
Hinkley, Thomas S Monson. Hallelujah, Hallelujah, Monson! Are the
words I have had to add since then. I was lucky to have 2 H's in a
row! @ I taught my home teaching families those Mnemonic devices. One
of their kids, Paul Dunn had a photographic memory. When we sorted
out the Apostle cards I made and played “go fish” on the
living-room coffee table, he would always win in record time. @ Which
reminds me. . . I bought some peanut butter on sale for a $1 a couple
of months ago. I dropped two in their own sacks and put in the letter
I wrote to my families and finally dropped them off at Yunkers,
Carters, and Bruce Randall's house on Saturday. It took me all week
to get up the motivation to make those deliveries. Bonnie and Quin
Carter came to church yesterday and they were all smiles. I asked if
they preferred creamy or extra crunchy? They said crunchy, so I had
taken them the right one. Then the nicest thing: Bonnie texted me in
gratitude. It was so nice to hear from a home teachee! I have so
missed having a home teachee that was open and responsive! @ Since I
am sending you 2 postcards this time I can include some emails I sent
to my “friendly connections” list. @ I have been so desirous to
share things I am learning from Hugh Nibley with my children. I was
so pleased to discover the movie they made of him on Youtube! I was
able to send the address and encourage them to at least listen to the
first 2 minutes. He was such a wonderful explorer and defender of the
church and I believe a dedicated, testimony filled, righteous man. As
you know my trust doesn't come easily. But I trust him at least up to
90% and even more. So here come 2
items: Sterling W Sill's ending 1, Hugh
Nibley bible
evidence 2
~@~ However,
the big finger cannot say to the little finger, “I have no need of
thee.” The little finger may come at the end of the line-up, but
that is the quarterback position, and you don’t need a great big
man to be the quarterback, providing the other members of the team
are fully qualified and effectively functioning. That is, the thumb
knows his business backwards and forwards and upside down and
standing on his head. The pointing finger has some powerful,
well-developed convictions about it; the big finger WANTS to do it,
in capital letters; the ring finger gets great satisfaction from
doing it; and all the little finger has to do is to do it. He is the
worker. He is the one who takes care of the mechanics of production.
He is the one that handles the checkup and does the follow-through.
He is the one Jesus came calling for when he pleaded for “doers of
the word” and not just hearers and talkers only. @Someone has said,
“My, oh my, what miracles we could accomplish if our hands moved as
fast as our tongues.” He said, “After all is said and done, there
is usually a lot more said than done.” . . . [three more
paragraphs-to be continued] gby- bltpjs- vjNext
time. @As I sit here on this platform each conference and raise up
my hand to make my personal covenant with the Lord, it is stimulating
to me to remember that the President of the Church sits directly
behind me and God is over my head, and I would not like to have
either of them feel that my hand was not clean or that any of my
necessary phylacteries were missing. And if I had the gift of speech
and the power to plant a conviction that I would like to have, I
would say to the millions of people in the world who are earnestly
seeking to be disciples of the Master to hold up their hands to God
and make a solemn covenant with him to keep all of his commandments.
@And I would remind everyone of that thrilling occasion when Moses
was leading the children of Israel in their battle against the
Amalekites. Moses took the rod of God in his hands and went to the
top of a sacred mount, where he held up his hands to God over the
battle; and as long as Moses held up his hands, Israel prevailed. But
when he let his hands down, the Amalekites prevailed. And as Moses’
arms became heavy with weariness, Aaron and Hur stood on either side
of Moses and helped him to hold up his hands until the battle was
won. (See Ex. 17:8–12.) @If
we all hold up clean, honest, industrious hands to God, then his work
will prevail. And then it will not be long before the prayer of the
Master is fulfilled wherein he said to his Father, “Thy kingdom
come. Thy will be done in earth, as it is in heaven.” (Matt.
6:10.) And may God bless you, my brothers and sisters, that all of us
together may effectively hold up our hands to God and that our
covenants may be acceptable to him. For this I humbly pray in the
name of Jesus Christ. Amen.
These next two I sent to "friendly connections" I somehow wanted to share them with my family but I didn't want to buy them all the book (6x15=$90). I was super excited to find 14 of the 19 books on line! So they can read them for free and I can get excerpts easily! [I tried over and over to remove the formatting. I repeated work, which I really dislike! So I am out of patience for separating the double words.]vj
~@~Chapter
18 The Lachish Letters* The Lachish Letters are the best evidence so
far discovered for the authenticity of Bible history. @friendly
connections @Chapter 18 @The Lachish Letters @About twenty-five miles
southwest of Jerusalem in Lehi’s day lay the powerfullyfortified
city of Lachish, the strongest place in Judah outside of
Jerusalemitself. Founded more than three thousand years before
Christ, it was underEgyptian rule in the fourteenth century B.C. when
the Khabiri (Hebrews) hadjust arrived. At that time, its king was
charged with conspiring with thenewcomers against his Egyptian
master. A later king of Lachish fought againstJoshua when the
Israelites took the city about 1220 B.C. In a third phase,either
David or Solomon fortified it strongly.The city’s strategic
importance down through the years is reflected in theBabylonian,
Assyrian, Egyptian, and biblical records. These describe a
successionof intrigues, betrayals, sieges, and disasters that make
the city’s storya woefully typical Palestinian “idyll.” Its
fall in the days ofJeremiah is dramatically recounted in a number of
letters found there in 1935and 1938. These original letters, actually
written at Jeremiah’s time, turnedup in the ruins of a guardhouse
that stood at the main gate of the city—twoletters a foot beneath
the street paving in front of the guardhouse, and theother sixteen
piled together below a stone bench set against the east wall.The wall
had collapsed when a great bonfire was set against it from the
outside.The bonfire was probably set by the soldiers of
Nebuchadnezzar because theywanted to bring down the wall, which
enclosed the gate to the city. Nebuchadnezzarhad to take the city
because it was the strongest fortress in Israel and layastride the
road to Egypt, controlling all of western Judah. Jeremiah tellsus
that it and another fortified place, Azekah, were the last to fall to
theinvaders (see Jeremiah 34:7). An ominous passage from Lachish
Letter 4:12–13reports that the writer could no longer see the
signalfires of Azekah—thatmeans that Lachish itself was the last to
go, beginning with the guardhousein flames.The letters survived the
heat because they were written on potsherds.They were written on
potsherds because the usual papyrus was unobtainable.It was
unobtainable because the supply from Egypt was cut off.The supply was
cut off because of the war.The letters were in the guardhouse because
they were being kept as evidencein the pending trial of a military
commander whose name was Hoshacyahu.He was being court-martialled
because he was suspected of treason.He was suspected of treason
because someone had been reading top-secret dispatchessent from the
court at Jerusalem to the commander at Lachish, whose name
wasYa’ush.Hoshacyahu was a likely suspect because all the mail had
to pass throughhis hands.It had to pass through his hands because he
was in command of a fortifiedtown on the road between Jerusalem and
Lachish, probably Qiryat Ye’arim. Hisduty, among other things, was
to forward the king’s mail—not to readit.That the confidential
letters had been read was apparent because somebodyhad tipped off a
certain prophet that he was in danger.He was in danger because the
king’s soldiers had been put on his trail.They were on his trail
because he was fleeing to Egypt.He was fleeing because he was wanted
by the police in Jerusalem.He was wanted by the police because he and
other prophets were consideredby the king’s supporters to be
subversives.They were considered subversives because they were
opposing the official policyand undermining morale by their
preaching. As Jeremiah puts it: “The princes[the important people]
said unto the king: We beseech thee, let this man beput to death: for
thus he weakeneth the hands of the men of war that remainin this
city, and the hands of all the people, in speaking such words unto
them”(Jeremiah 38:4). As Lachish Letter 6:5–6 puts it: “The
words of the[prophet] are not good [and are liable] to loosen the
hands.” The Bookof Mormon adds another reinforcement: “In that
same year there came manyprophets, prophesying unto the people they
they must repent, or the great cityJerusalem must be destroyed” (1
Nephi 1:4)—distressing news indeed.The prophet who was tipped off
to escape “was surely Uriah of Qiryat Ye’arim.”1The Lachish
Letters are the best evidence so far discovered for the authenticity
~@~of
Bible history. [. . .
~@~Class
distinction, rich and poor, educated and un, wealth and poverty is
the warning message. @friendly connections @vern jensen
<phonev6@gmail.com>
@Chapter 20 @The Prophetic Book of Mormon @There are many prophecies
in the Book of Mormon, far more than the casualreader would suspect.
Some have been fulfilled; some have yet to be. I wantto talk about
one dominant prophetic theme, which is for us here and now themost
important of them all. The editors of the Book of Mormon, Mormon
andMoroni, give this theme top priority and bring it to our attention
as a matterof life and death. The whole Book of Mormon from beginning
to end gives itmaximum emphasis. As we all know, that strange and
powerful book is a voicefrom the dust, a message from a departed
people, a step-by-step account ofhow all their deeds and
accomplishments came to be expunged from the memoryof man while other
far older civilizations in the Old World have survivedto this day.At
the center of ancient American studies today lies the overriding
question,“Why did the major civilizations collapse so suddenly, so
completely, andso mysteriously?” The answer now given by the
overwhelming majority ofthose scholars as contained, for example, in
T. P. Culbert’s valuable collectionof studies on the subject, is
that society as a whole suffered a process of polarization into two
separate and opposing ways of life, an increased distancebetween
peasant and noble, as W. T. Sanders puts it, that went along with
growinghostility between cities and nations as resource margins
declined.1 The polarizing syndrome is a habit of thought and action
that operates at all levels, fromfamily feuds like Lehi’s to the
battle of galaxies. It is the pervasive polarization described in the
Book of Mormon and sources from other cultures which I wishnow to
discuss briefly, ever bearing in mind that the Book of Mormon
accountis addressed to future generations, not to “harrow up their
souls,”but to tell them how to get out of the type of dire impasse
which it describes. Moroni is explicit: “And this cometh unto you,
O ye Gentiles, . . . that ye may repent, . . . that ye may not bring
down the fulness of the wrath of God upon you as the inhabitants of
the land have hithertodone”
(Ether2:11). And again Moroni says: “Give thanks unto God that he
hath made manifestunto you our imperfections, that ye may learn to be
more wise than we have been”(Mormon 9:31).What we are to avoid in
particular is that polarizing process that begins onthe first page of
the Book of Mormon and continues to the last. In the openingscene it
is Egypt versus Babylon, West versus East, with Lehi’s people
caughtin the middle; and the book ends with the climactic
confrontation at Cumorah,with Moroni caught between two wicked and
warring peoples in a battle of annihilation.The Book of Mormon is the
story of the fearful passage that led from the onesituation to the
other. Every Latter-day Saint knows that it is a tale of
Nephitesversus Lamanites, conveniently classified as the Good Guys
versus the Bad Guys.In a book called Since Cumorah, I pointed out
that a line drawn between thetwo peoples does not automatically
separate the righteous from the wicked atall.2 Far from it—the
Lamanites were often the good guys and the Nephitesthe bad guys; and
they had a way of shifting back and forth from one categoryto the
other with disturbing frequency. In the end, as Mormon sadly
observesin letters to his son, it is a toss-up as to which of the two
is the worse.
[ . . .bps, those were the beginnings of two chapters that I would love to intrigue my children into reading! I may be weird but I have asked myself over and over again through the years, is the bible really true? Couldn't it have been written just to control the masses? But it is true!!! Even the Lachish letters confirm it! 600bc. Wonderful!! Potshards. Gby-bps-vj
[ . . .bps, those were the beginnings of two chapters that I would love to intrigue my children into reading! I may be weird but I have asked myself over and over again through the years, is the bible really true? Couldn't it have been written just to control the masses? But it is true!!! Even the Lachish letters confirm it! 600bc. Wonderful!! Potshards. Gby-bps-vj
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