Old Faith Blog

Great article at LDSFreemen.com  on God's commandment to multiply and replenish the Earth, by Ezra Taylor. The introduction: Happiness, that is true joy, is something that all of Heavenly Father’s children desire to have. The Psalmist says that “Happy is the man that hath his quiver full of them” (Psalms 127:5). What is a quiver and what do we need to fill it with to bring us that happiness? When we read the context, of course, more understanding is opened up to us. King Solomon writes, “Lo, children are an heritage of the LORD: and the fruit of the womb is his reward. As arrows are in the hand of a mighty man; so are children of the youth. Happy is the man that hath his quiver full of them.” (Psalms 137:3-5) A quiver is a case for holding or carrying arrows. It was used as a metaphor to point out the fact that when one fills up their life with children, which are “an heritage of the Lord”, true happiness follows.

The Church has started publishing a video series called Mormon Messages  on Youtube and among those are the two embedded below about why we build temples and the blessings that are received through the temple. My wife and I have began doing temple work for our family. My side has been mostly done and still requires some more work for the furthest back and outward of my family tree. We've just begun baptisms and are working through those of the names we have. My wife's side is completely untouched except for her grandmothers, grandfathers, and a couple of uncles that have passed away. We have a lot of geneology work to do for her family as she is a first-generation convert. It's been exciting to do the work for those who you can trace to and possibly share a surname with. It's felt a little more significant for me knowing a little better those whose work we are doing. They're not complete strangers, anyway. Here's those two videos that I recommend watching to bet...

MormonTimes.com reports on a student , Michael Baldwin, at Brigham Young University who has put together a paper harmonizing the several accounts of Joseph Smith's first vision. The report contains an excerpt from the harmonization and I recommend reading it. Here's the report explaining what that means: Baldwin noticed that each version had some aspects that were unique. One would mention one detail while another would focus on another detail. He decided to bring all the different versions together in a harmony -- similar to what many have done with the four New Testament Gospels. He made two columns to help organize the information. One column had the common elements of the First Vision. Another column contained the unique elements. He created a single narrative of the First Vision from the different accounts and color-coded the words to keep track of the sources.