Mormon Musings

Sometimes this deep infusion of Christ into modern revelation [i.e., including through the Book of Mormon] does not achieve its purpose in people’s lives. Some people’s faith is based more on Joseph Smith than on Jesus Christ. When they begin to question the Prophet, they lose faith in the Savior. We all know of Latter-day Saints whose faith is shaken by new facts, such as the existence of the alternate accounts of the First Vision which I have talked about today. When this new information builds up, they grow concerned. Could it all be wrong? Their consternation goes so far that they consider leaving the church, painful as that would be.  For a long time, I would try to answer their specific questions, try to persuade them there was another way of understanding the facts that were bothering them. I reminded them that people like me and many other informed Latter-day Saints are aware of all the disruptive information and still believe in Joseph Smith. We would talk for hours, but n...

The moment a man or a woman becomes angry they show a great weakness. Wilford Woodruff

 "The Word was made flesh in order that the whole human being would become God, deified by the grace of God become man --whole man, soul and body, by nature, and becoming whole God, soul and body, by grace."  Maximus the Confessor (580-662 A.D.)

If you think you can do a thing or think you can't do a thing, you're right. Don't find fault, find a remedy. Failure is simply the opportunity to begin again, this time more intelligently. Henry Ford 

A beast does not know that he is a beast, and the nearer a man gets to being a beast, the less he knows it. I find that doing of the will of God leaves me no time for disputing about His plans. A man's real belief is that which he lives by.  What a man believes is the thing that he does, not the thing that he thinks. George McDonald

When asked why Abraham was commanded to go to Mount Moriah and offer his only hope of posterity, President Hugh B. Brown, an Apostle, said, ‘Abraham needed to learn something about Abraham.’ The Lord already knew what Abraham would do, but Abraham didn’t know the depth of his own faith in God until he was actually stopped from making the sacrifice in the very act of performing it. It was then that Abraham realized how far he was willing to go in the service of his God. This was a growth lesson for Abraham.

If I have a fear, it is that the principle of sacrifice may be slipping away from us. This principle is a law of God. We are obliged to understand it and practice it. If being a member of this Church becomes too easy, testimonies will become shallow, and the roots of testimony will not go down into the soil of faith as they did with our pioneer forefathers.   Elder M. Russell Ballard