Mormon Musings

In one way we think a great deal too much of the atomic bomb. ‘How are we to live in an atomic age?’  I am tempted to reply: ‘Why, as you would have lived in the sixteenth century when the plague visited London every year, or as you would have lived in a Viking age when raiders from Scandinavia might land and cut your throat any night…’   In other words, do not let us begin by exaggerating the novelty of our situation.  Believe me, dear sir or madam, you and all whom you love were already sentenced to death before the atomic bomb was invented…It is perfectly ridiculous to go about whimpering and drawing long faces because the scientists have added one more chance of painful and premature death to a world which already bristled with such chances and in which death itself was not a chance at all, but a certainty…“If we are all going to be destroyed by an atomic bomb, let that bomb when it comes find us doing sensible and human things- praying, working, teaching, readin...

The importance of reading, studying, and searching the scriptures is highlighted in several elements of Lehi’s vision of the tree of life. Father Lehi saw several groups of people pressing forward along the strait and narrow path, seeking to obtain the tree and its fruit. The members of each group had entered onto the path through the gate of repentance and baptism by water and had received the gift of the Holy Ghost (see 2 Nephi 31:17–20). The tree of life is the central feature in the dream and is identified in 1 Nephi 11 as a representation of Jesus Christ. The fruit on the tree is a symbol for the blessings of the Savior’s Atonement. Interestingly, the major theme of the Book of Mormon, inviting all to come unto Christ, is central in Lehi’s vision. Of particular interest is the rod of iron that led to the tree (see 1 Nephi 8:19). The rod of iron is the word of God. In 1 Nephi 8, verses 21 through 23, we learn about a group of people who pressed forward and commenced in the path tha...

If dying to that old way of using God’s law is, then, Nephi’s own explanation for how we are saved by grace, why does he add in 2 Nephi 25:23 that we are saved by grace “after all we can do”? What does this additional phrase mean? In particular, what did “after all we can do” mean when the Book of Mormon was first translated into English? As Daniel McClellan demonstrates, in 1830 the phrase “after all we can do” was unmistakably a very “specific idiom with a very clear meaning.” It was consistently used for “describing circumstances that obtain in spite of everything that may be done to overcome, prevent, or avoid them.” In short, “after all we can do” was, at that time, a clear and commonly understood way of saying “despite all we can do.” According to Nephi, we are saved by grace despite all we can do . Adam Miller (emphasis added)

With frightening speed, a testimony that is not nourished daily "by the good word of God" can crumble.  Thus, the antidote to Satan's scheme is clear: we need daily experiences worshipping the Lord and stying His gospel.  I plead with you to let God prevail in your life.  Give Him a fair share of your time.  As you do, notice what happens to your positive spiritual momentum. President Russell M. Nelson, April 2022 General Conference

"God is never surprised." Neal A. Maxell

Oliver Cowdery, previous to his apostasy said to President Joseph Smith: "If I should leave the Church it would break up." Joseph said to Oliver—"What, who are you? The Lord is not dependent upon you, the work will roll forth do what you will." Oliver left the Church, and was gone about ten years; then he came back again, to a branch of the Church in meeting on Mosquito Creek, in Pottawattamie County, Iowa. The body of the Church had come off here to the west, but there was still remaining there a branch of about fifteen hundred or two thousand people, and when he came there he bore his testimony to the truth of the Book of Mormon and the divine mission of the Twelve Apostles, and asked to be received into the Church again, and said that he had never seen in all his life so large a congregation of Saints as the one then assembled. We loved to hear brother Oliver testify, we were pleased with his witness, but when he passed off and went among our enemies he was forgo...

Joseph Smith once said that the Book of Mormon is the keystone of our religion. Why is the Book of Mormon the keystone of our religion? What is the Book of Mormon? Whatever else it is, it is revelation. In fact, it is a revelation about revelation. It is the basic document by which we would begin to testify to the world, with a copy in our hands, that the heavens are opened and that God lives and that he speaks and that Jesus is the Christ. That is a basic message of salvation. And the process by which that message comes is revelation. And Joseph Smith taught that that is the characteristic of this Church, a characteristic by which it will always be known and recognized. Jeffrey R. Holland, BYU Devotional 1976