We Americans tend to be a shockingly ahistorical lot, but this anniversary really does deserve at least a minute of remembrance:   http://www.nationalreview.com/slideshows/today-history-3     Read more

    Matthew 19:1-2 Mark 10:1 Luke 9:51   I like the language of Luke here:  “When the days drew near for him to be received up, he set his fact to go to Jerusalem.”  Or, as the King James Version has it, “he steadfastly set his face to go to Jerusalem.”   καὶ αὐτὸς τὸ πρόσωπον ἐστήρισεν τοῦ πορεύεσθαι εἰς Ἰερουσαλήμ.   We mustn’t assume, simply because he was the divine Son of God, that this was easy for... Read more

    http://www.realclearscience.com/blog/2015/09/courts_not_qualified_to_decide_science_lawsuits.html   I think I may have been troubled by it myself, from time to time.  In my experience, it can be aggravated by spending too many hours online.     Read more

    John 10:19-21   Some appear to imagine that, while religious questions today are ambiguous and while contemporary religious claims are disputable and usually disputed, matters would have been much clearer had they only lived back in the days of Jesus.   Passages such as this one prove that, on the whole, the imagined clarity didn’t exist then, either.   In this life, absent divine grace, we mostly see through a glass, darkly.   That’s pretty plainly the way it’s... Read more

    I wish the Middle East offered more stories like this:   https://www.facebook.com/idfonline/videos/1027805817242288/?pnref=story   Not the injury to the Palestinian boy, of course.   No, I’m referring to acts of kindness or service that cross ethnic, religious, and political lines.     Read more

    From the invaluable Ryan Anderson:   http://dailysignal.com/2015/08/22/its-not-hypocritical-to-let-infertile-couples-marry-but-oppose-gay-marriage-heres-why/?utm_source=heritagefoundation&utm_medium=email&utm_campaign=morningbell&mkt_tok=3RkMMJWWfF9wsRohvq3OZKXonjHpfsX56e4sXaGwlMI%2F0ER3fOvrPUfGjI4ATMpnMK%2BTFAwTG5toziV8R7jHKM1t0sEQWBHm     Read more

    Ten very interesting minutes:   http://www.deseretnews.com/article/865635807/Discovery-of-chiasmus-in-Book-of-Mormon-recounted-in-new-YouTube-video.html?pg=all     Read more

    “The mind is its own place, and in itself can make a heaven of hell, a hell of heaven.”  (John Milton)   I’ve seen this principle demonstrated over and over again, for many years.  Sad, but true.     Read more

    For those of you who weren’t able to participate in the Interpreter Foundation’s third birthday party last month, but also for those who were, the Foundation has now posted a video recording of the after-dinner question-and-answer session with Drs. Margaret Barker and Stephen Webb that was a highlight of the evening:   http://www.mormoninterpreter.com/an-evening-with-margaret-barker-stephen-webb/     Read more

    McKay White, Stephen Smoot, Jeffrey Bradshaw, and Cassandra Hedelius gather in this, the 137th scripture roundtable posted by the Interpreter Foundation, to discuss Ephesians 1-2, 4-6 — which, not coincidentally, is the focus of Lesson 39 in the 2015 Gospel Doctrine manual for the Church of Jesus Christ of Latter-day Saints:   http://www.mormoninterpreter.com/scripture-roundtable-137-new-testament-gospel-doctrine-lesson-39-for-the-perfecting-of-the-saints/     Read more