Introducing the “Interpreter Show”

I’m pleased to announce the debut of the Interpreter Show.

It will begin this coming Sunday evening, 14 January, on K-Talk Radio (AM 1640), and will run each week from 7 PM to 8 PM on Sundays.

The show will be available both via broadcast radio and via the internet.  Moreover, once completed, programs will be archived so that they will be available both on the radio station’s website and through the Interpreter Foundation’s website.

The first broadcast, this Sunday evening, will feature Steve Densley and Martin Tanner.

This, I think, is going to be a lot of fun.  We’ll be trying different line-ups and approaches and working our way into it, but I’m really excited about both the first broadcast and the program’s long-term potential.

We hope you’ll join us, whether live or by means of our archived broadcasts.

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Another set of notes derived from John W. Welch, et al., eds.  Knowing Why: 137 Evidences That the Book of Mormon Is True (American Fork: Covenant Communications, 2017):

“Why Did Nephi Write about Politics on the Plates Meant for Spiritual Things?”  (33-34)

Nephi said that his writings on the small plates would focus on spiritual matters, not worldly issues.  Yet what we have today in 1 Nephi and 2 Nephi comes from those small plates, and there’s quite a bit in them about political dissension, war, and other secular topics.  Is this not a contradiction?

“Nephi carefully constructed what he wrote,” says Noel Reynolds, responding to essentially that question, “to convince his own and later generations that the Lord had selected him over his older brothers to be Lehi’s successor.  Thus, one interesting way to read the account is as a political tract produced to show that his rule was authoritative.”

Continuing, Reynolds — a Harvard-trained political scientist — explains that “Nephi’s effort to persuade his descendants and us to believe in Christ must include a demonstration that he is the rightful heir to the prophetic office. . . .  Nephi intertwines the argument for Christ with the argument for the legitimacy of his own authority.  They stand or fall together.”

“For Nephi’s people,” concludes Reynolds, “his writings long served both as an extremely sophisticated political tract — something of a founding constitution for the Nephite people — and as an elaborate and compelling witness of Jesus Christ.”

For the details, see this article and its references.