Doctrinal Essays

A talk delivered in Sacrament Meeting Good morning Brothers and Sisters. Today It is my privilege to combine my interests in Ancient Israelite worship with this year's theme of keeping the Sabbath day holy. While we do not practice our religion in the same way as they did, there are a number of similarities that have deepened my understanding of the Sabbath day, sacred ordinances, and my attitudes toward worship in general. My hope is that we can all be uplifted and edified together as I share some of the lessons I've learned about Sabbath day observance with you. SIN If you think of the Law of Moses as a complex and ancient system of worship, you're not alone. There are a lot of rituals and procedures that are easy to get confused about, but its overall purpose is really pretty simple. It outlined certain things that made one unclean, and a process by which they could become clean again. At its core, the Law of Moses was to point the Israelites to the future Mess...

Through the years I've learned a lot about a particular weakness of mine. This weakness is multi-faceted and becomes clearer to me with each passing year. I don't learn the way most people do. 1) I process information slowly - efficiently - but slowly. I liken my brain to an old computer with lots of memory, but a slow processor. 2) I am often blatantly ignorant of completely obvious facts. This one embarrasses me the most and is the reason I tend to prefer taking a back seat in group conversations, for fear I will expose this weakness. 3) The previous two weaknesses combine into the third weakness of being unable to speak my mind clearly when put on the spot. My mind is full of deep interwoven thoughts, but to get them out orally is extremely frustrating to me. Fortunately, the Lord has provided a way for me to do so through writing. I was recently reminded of these 'disabilities' when I was in my Biblical Hebrew class and had an awkward moment from category 2 abo...

Throughout the history of good and evil on earth there have been many key moments when evil might have prevailed over righteous had the Lord not intervened. Such times demonstrate the Lord's tender mercy to the righteous, along with his vengeance upon the wicked. But despite his miraculous ability to protect and preserve he has always used practical means of separating the righteous from the wicked before exercising judgment. Such will be the case again in a future event. "The Callout", as it has come to be known in some circles, will offer protection during the  Days of Tribulation  to those who hear the Lord's voice, and it will safely lead many of the elect who harden not their hearts into the Millennium (see  Doctrine and Covenants 43:29 ). The Callout is not widely discussed or understood. Just enough has been revealed to start conversation and  lead to speculation. Those who have not studied this subject may think of it as a future event when the saints...

I recently hit a climax in my research of the Last Days. Now I'm coming down the mountain in a state of marvel and wondering what the heck to do with the knowledge I just gained. The experience changed me. I feel like I've read the scriptures my entire life as if through binoculars, and now I've experienced many doctrines through a microscope. I now see myself on the pages, and understand that ancient prophets have literally seen me, and are speaking to me 'through the dust'. I now believe many of the abstract and difficult to understand prophecy's are not only literal, but will be experienced by me ... firsthand...in my lifetime. I'm awake now. I get it. I'm deeply touched that the Lord gave us these sacred writings containing prophetic words - for me and my family, and anyone who will read them. Along the journey I stumbled across a few precious truths that I've never had explained to me before - Even "Hidden Treasures of Knowledge" (...

I recently undertook an intense study of the Abrahamic Covenant. I learned a lot! It put nearly every doctrine and principle I've learned in a global context. I now see that everything in the gospel of Jesus Christ relates to the covenants the Father made with Abraham, Isaac, and Jacob. And I see that God is very interested in Abraham's posterity and in protecting them. Later I became curious how those covenants pertained to the Last days, and the Millennium. I have read and reread the books of Isaiah, 1st and 2nd Nephi, key Doctrine and Covenants chapters, and a bunch of general conference quotes. Not surprisingly, I realized the Abrahamic Covenant has everything to do with the Millennium. There were a few other significant lessons I learned along the way. Here are my takeaways from this interesting study: The difficult to understand scriptures are often most critical.  The chapters I have often skipped in scriptures due to their difficulty of interpretation, like Isaiah, ...

I believe in the importance of church activity, and have for the most part attended my meetings faithfully for the majority of my life. Having said that, I confess that while my mind understands the importance and necessity of church and temple attendance, my heart has not always been with my body as I have sat through those meetings. I would even say that nine times out of ten I leave the church and temple place empty handed. To be clear, I do not believe this weakness of mine has anything to do with a failure to understand the doctrines of the gospel. Rather, I think it has more to do with the way I hold those doctrines in my sometimes empty heart. This emptiness has caused me deep feelings of regret and guilt. When I hear others talk of their rewarding, spiritual, and uplifting experiences from church and temple worship, I feel even guiltier. I feel glad for those people and their experiences, but frankly I can't always relate. But I'm trying to. In 1997 I was inspi...

All too often science and faith have a perceived relationship much like two members of a failing marriage whose differences just can't be reconciled. A number of papers have been written on this perceived rift between science and religion, and is a topic that people with interests in both must confront sooner or later. This paper presents my own discoveries in the establishment of a healthy science and faith relationship. Since I was a kid, I have loved science, in all its flavors. The thought of Archaeologists with their brushes and hammers, uncovering history and assembling stories from their discoveries is exhilarating. I respect the Physicist's who are able to determine astronomical distances of objects in space, and their chemical compositions, all from our own earth through mathematics and observation. The classifications and understanding we have of anatomy and physiology, geology, you name it - it's all awesome. Then to consider that all we know today of science...