Give Every Duty its Proper Time and Place

A vocal critic of the claims of the Restoration has lately been focused on Joseph Smith’s First Vision.  The invaluable Robert Boylan takes brief but effective aim at one of this critic’s arguments in

“Candidate for Special Pleading Award 2017”

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In a concise separate entry, Brother Boylan posts a note on two items related to animals in the Book of Mormon:

“New World Animals and Loanshifting”

Incidentally, in certain circles I’m regularly mocked as “Tapir Dan.”  The folks who engage in this high merriment seem to imagine that the “horse/tapir” hypothesis originates with me.  This simply reveals their ignorance.  It doesn’t.  Nor have I even devoted much time to advocating it, though I think that it’s worth considering.  Of course, in my experience with them, most of the mockers don’t even seem to get the point of the hypothesis or to understand the argument.

For background on the topic, see here.

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Elder Neil L. Andersen of the Council of the Twelve has recorded a three-minute invitation to this weekend’s General Conference that some of you might enjoy, including three ideas for how to prepare to profit from Conference:

https://www.facebook.com/lds.neil.l.andersen/videos/vb.157863284388881/815789028596300/?type=2&theater&notif_t=notify_me_page&notif_id=1506524810257099

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One of my former teaching assistants, Rachel Singer, alerts me to the Run4Refuge 5k/10k event that will be held in Provo on 21 October 2017 to benefit refugees:

https://www.facebook.com/events/1644770298928704/?acontext=%7B%22ref%22%3A%2229%22%2C%22ref_notif_type%22%3A%22plan_user_invited%22%2C%22action_history%22%3A%22null%22%7D&notif_id=1506528570994890&notif_t=plan_user_invited

I will be out of state that weekend, but I hope that many will participate.

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The needs are great.

Here’s another item, from a Florida news outlet, for your file on how the world would be better off without the Church of Jesus Christ of Latter-day Saints because Mormonism, like religion in general, is a force for evil:

“Food and supplies donated from Mormon church to Gainesville:  There were two 36,000-pound deliveries”

And here’s yet another, proving that the Church helps nobody:

“Mormon Volunteers Help in Mexico Earthquake Aftermath”

You can help the Church to do even more such evil by contributing here.  All of your donation will go to helping those who need help; none of it will go to bureaucratic overhead.

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Meanwhile, it seems that the response of the United States federal government to the disastrous conditions in its Caribbean territories has been . . . underwhelming:

“Mitt Romney calls on Congress to ‘put differences aside,’ prioritize Puerto Rico and U.S. Virgin Islands ‘rescue’”

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Finally, I taught a Gospel Doctrine lesson on Sunday that focused on, and reflected on, the rescue of the Willie and Martin handcart companies in 1856.  It impressed me all over again, so I’m going to cite something from Brigham Young again that I cited just a week ago:

When he received word of the plight of some of the handcart pioneers, Brigham stood up during General Conference at Salt Lake City on 5 October 1856 — it was a Sunday — and addressed the assembled Latter-day Saints:

“Many of our brethren and sisters are on the plains with handcarts, and probably many are now seven hundred miles from this place, and they must be brought here, we must send assistance to them. . . .

“I shall call upon the Bishops this day. I shall not wait until tomorrow, nor until the next day, for 60 good mule teams and 12 or 15 wagons. I do not want to send oxen. I want good horses and mules. They are in this Territory, and we must have them. Also 12 tons of flour and 40 good teamsters, besides those that drive the teams. . . .  First, 40 good young men who know how to drive teams, to take charge of the teams that are now managed by men, women and children who know nothing about driving them. Second, 60 or 65 good spans of mules, or horses, with harness, whipple trees, neck-yokes, stretchers, lead chains, &c. And thirdly, 24 thousand pounds of flour, which we have on hand. . . .

“I will tell you all that your faith, religion, and profession of religion, will never save one soul of you in the Celestial Kingdom of our God, unless you carry out just such principles as I am now teaching you. Go and bring in those people now on the plains.And attend strictly to those things which we call temporal, or temporal duties. Otherwise, your faith will be in vain. The preaching you have heard will be in vain to you, and you will sink to Hell, unless you attend to the things we tell you.”

As quoted in LeRoy R. Hafen and Ann W. Hafen, Handcarts to Zion (1960), 120-121.

When the suffering handcart pioneers were approaching Salt Lake City, Brigham was again meeting on the sabbath with the Latter-day Saints:

“The afternoon meeting will be omitted, for I wish the sisters to go home and prepare to give those who have just arrived a mouthful of something to eat, and to wash them and nurse them up. You know that I would give more for a dish of pudding and milk, or a baked potato and salt, were I in the situation of those persons who have just come in, than I would for all your prayers, though you were to stay here all the afternoon and pray. Prayer is good, but when baked potatoes and pudding and milk are needed, prayer will not supply their place . . .  Give every duty its proper time and place.”

As quoted in LeRoy R. Hafen and Ann W. Hafen, Handcarts to Zion (1960), 139.