“Maori Responses to the Mormon Church,” and etc.

I’m pleased to announce that the remarks made by Dr. Robert Joseph, of New Zealand’s University of Waikato, at the Interpreter Foundation’s fifth-anniversary birthday dinner are now up on the Interpreter website.

And don’t worry.  After the first minute or so, he speaks in English:

“Maori Responses to the Mormon Church.”

I think that some of you will find his comments both interesting and enjoyable.  I surely did.

If you listen closely to the Maori portion, you’ll hear references to “Midgley” and “Uncle Louis.”  Professor Louis Midgley has, himself, written for Interpreter on things Maori, and he is beloved among many in Aotearoa (“the land of the long, white cloud”) or New Zealand:

http://www.mormoninterpreter.com/author/louis/

(I notice that we have a formatting glitch that needs to be fixed in some of Professor Midgley’s article titles.)

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I find such accounts as these — which are innumerable — extraordinarily interesting:

“5 Insights into the Spirit World from Those Who Have Seen It”

They come from many people, of all religious backgrounds and of no religious background at all, and, although they sometimes disagree in details, they agree very much in the basic story that they give.

I’m inclined to think, therefore, that they can’t all be lightly and casually explained away.

Which is a very important fact, if true.

“If you wish to upset the law that all crows are black,” said the famous Harvard philosopher William James (d. 1910s) regarding a related subject, “you mustn’t seek to show that no crows are; it is enough if you prove one single crow to be white.”

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I love to see stories like this one, and I really enjoyed the four-minute video that accompanies it:

“New Ghana Missionary Training Center Completed”

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Here are some other international stories:

“Mormons Around the World Country Newsroom Websites August 8, 2017”

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Yet another reminder that the “Chiasmus Jubilee” is next week.  If you’re not registered for it, there’s still time.  And it’s free:

https://bookofmormoncentral.org/events/chiasmus-day-2017

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“The Standard of Truth has been erected; no unhallowed hand can stop the work from progressing; persecutions may rage, mobs may combine, armies may assemble, calumny may defame, but the truth of God will go forth boldly, nobly, and independent, till it has penetrated every continent, visited every clime, swept every country, and sounded in every ear, till the purposes of God shall be accomplished, and the Great Jehovah shall say the work is done.”

Joseph Smith (1805-1844)