It’s been a good week, thus far. On Monday morning, my wife and I read through the latest iteration of the script for the pending Interpreter Foundation Six Days in August theatrical film. I’m really liking it, and it’s improving, becoming tighter and more focused, with each set of revisions. That afternoon, we met with our three principal filmmakers — Mark Goodman, James Jordan, and Russell Richins — who were also the core of our Witnesses project and,... Read more
First of all, I wish a happy fourth of July to everybody out there and a Happy Independence Day to my fellow yanquis, and, to my English friends, I offer this chirpy little ditty from no less a personage than King George III himself. And now, that done, I want to share a few passages from Michael Guillen, Believing is Seeing: A Physicist Explains How Science Shattered His Atheism and Revealed the Necessity of Faith (Carol Stream,... Read more
The following items were posted just today on the website of the Interpreter Foundation: Interpreter Radio Show — June 25, 2023 The discussants for the 25 June 2023 installment of the Interpreter Radio Show were Steve Densley, Mark Johnson, and John Thompson, along with special guest Matt Bowen. They discussed Come, Follow Me New Testament lesson 30, the witnesses of the Book of Mormon, and Dr. Bowen’s latest Interpreter Journal article, and those audio tracks have been separated out for... Read more
My wife and I just finished hosting our regular monthly book group, which is officially titled The Gadianton Polysophical Marching and Chowder Society. (We’re still doing virtual, online meetings.) Our book for this month was Prue Shaw’s Reading Dante: From Here to Eternity, which we really enjoyed. It’s an excellent commentary. On Friday night, our smaller reading group — just five of us — met for dinner and a discussion of Charles Dickens’s Great Expectations. There is really... Read more
I have said here on multiple occasions that, owing to the concerns expressed by some former donors to the Interpreter Foundation, I no longer hold any political opinions and that I’m not even aware who the president is, nor when she is going to need to campaign toward earning her second (or it is her third?) five-year term. But perhaps I should be clearer: I hold no partisan political opinions. I won’t even admit whether I’m a Whig... Read more
Astoundingly, two new articles went up today on the website of the Interpreter Foundation: ““I Will Come to You”: An Investigation of Early Christian Beliefs about Post-Ascension Visitations of the Risen Jesus,” written by Timothy Gervais Abstract: While later Creedal Christians have come to view “the Ascension” recorded in the first chapter of Acts as a conclusive corporeal appearance of the Resurrected Lord, earliest Christians do not appear to have conceived of this appearance as “final” in any... Read more
With three of our friends, my wife and I formed a tiny book group a couple of years ago, or thereabouts. We meet roughly once a month, though a little bit irregularly, for dinner and conversation. Our book for tonight is Great Expectations, by Charles Dickens. (It’s too bad, by the way, that Dickens will probably never write the sequel, No Expectations: Mr. Pip Goes to Egypt.) I’m trying to recall whether I’ve ever actually read Great Expectations... Read more
Dr. Lynn Johnson has kindly called my attention to an article that appeared in yesterday’s Epoch Times: “Depressed Woman Dies on Operating Table, Sees Heaven and Future Events, Returns to Life a New Person.” It’s a good example, and a pretty representative one, of a near-death experience, and I want to call attention to certain aspects of it: At twenty-one, Tricia Barker was depressed and suicidal. In fact, she attempted suicide. But she woke up, still quite... Read more
This presentation, which was delivered by Camille Stilson Williams on Saturday, 12 March 2016, at 2016’s Second Interpreter Science & Mormonism Symposium: “Body, Brain, Mind, and Spirit,” has just gone up on the website of the Interpreter Foundation: “Conference Talks: Veiled in Flesh: An LDS Perspective on the Body” I was very quickly aware of the news when, remarkably, the skeletal remains of King Richard III of England were found under a “car park” — in... Read more
Today marks the 179th anniversary of the assassination of the Prophet Joseph Smith and his elder brother Hyrum by a mob in Carthage, Illinois. They were, ostensibly, in the custody and under the protection of the state. The British-born John Taylor, a member of the Quorum of the Twelve Apostles and the future third president of the Church of Jesus Christ of Latter-day Saints, was grievously wounded during the attack. During visits to Carthage and, sixteen... Read more
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