It was forty years ago today Mount St. Helens made a night from day. So may I introduce to you the boom you’ve known for all these years – 1980’s Cascade Mountains blast: “40 years ago today, Mount St. Helens erupted” “‘It Seemed Apocalyptic’ 40 Years Ago When Mount St. Helens Erupted” In reading some of these accounts, you may be reminded, as I have been powerfully reminded, of the reactions of some people to... Read more
Two articles worth noting: Michael Nahm and Joachim Nicolay, “Essential Features of Eight Published Muslim Near-Death Experiences: An Addendum to Joel Ibrahim Krep’s ‘The Search for Muslim Near-Death Experiences,'” Journal of Near-Death Studies 29/1 (Fall 2010): 255-263. Abstract: Among other authors, Joel Ibrahim Kreps (2009) has recently published accounts of Muslim near-death experiences (NDEs). With the present paper, we aim to contribute to the growing number of non-Western NDE reports by providing summaries of eight additional Muslim NDEs, seven... Read more
“And we began to till the ground, yea, even with all manner of seeds, with seeds of corn, and of wheat, and of barley, and with neas, and with sheum, and with seeds of all manner of fruits” (Mosiah 9:9) From John W. Welch, et al., eds. Knowing Why: 137 Evidences That the Book of Mormon Is True (American Fork: Covenant Communications, 2017): There are actually three types of wild barley native to the Americas, something... Read more
We have been using a bit of our extra at-home Sabbath time to do some family history. Today, we read through notes that were taken at the funeral of my wife’s great grandmother. One of those who spoke at the funeral quoted from an essay on immortality that the speaker attributed to the great French poet, essayist, and novelist Victor Hugo (best known in the English-speaking world for his novels The Hunchback of Notre-Dame [French: Notre-Dame de Paris, 1831) and Les... Read more
From John W. Welch, et al., eds. Knowing Why: 137 Evidences That the Book of Mormon Is True (American Fork: Covenant Communications, 2017): Knowing Why, pages 197-198, provides a short summary of John Gee, “Limhi in the Library,” Journal of Book of Mormon Studies 1, no. 1 (1992): 54–66. If Mormon had not quoted extensively from his speeches, Limhi — son of King Noah, grandson of Zeniff, and a Nephite king in his own right — might... Read more
Some of you may not have heard the news that the Laie, Hawaii, campus of Brigham Young University will soon have a new president: “Church Names Native Hawaiian as New President of Brigham Young University–Hawaii: John “Keoni” Kauwe and his wife, Monica, begin service on July 1″ Dr. Kauwe has recently been serving as the dean of graduate studies at the main campus of Brigham Young University, in Provo, Utah. It’s of interest, though, to note... Read more
I very seldom think about “Heartland” models of the geography of the Book of Mormon, let alone about Jonathan Neville, who is an extremely vocal proponent of a “Heartland” point of view. (He is particularly exercised over the location of the ancient Hill Cumorah.) I rarely if ever post anything of my own replying to him or to “Heartland” ideas. I’m just not interested in them. I don’t think that I could pick Mr. Neville out of a... Read more
Regarding Acts 3, I simply want to point to three stunning verses from Peter’s impromptu speech to the crowd in the temple at Jerusalem. Their contrast with the scene of the dispirited apostles hiding out on the Saturday between Friday’s Crucifixion and the events of the Resurrection that commenced sometime on Sunday morning could not possibly be any more clear. Something must have happened! Anyway, here they are, in the ESV or English Standard Version: The God... Read more
I liked this passage from Graham E. Fuller, A World Without Islam (New York, Boston, and London: Little, Brown and Company, 2010): When the troops of the First Crusade finally reached Jerusalem in 1099, reconquest was a brutal affair, in extraordinary contrast to the manner i which Jerusalem fell to disciplined Arab forces some five hundred years earlier. In 637 CE [= AD], we recall the second Caliph ‘Umar had personally entered the city after a siege of... Read more
In a remarkable section (pages 77-88) of Carlo Rovelli, Reality Is Not What It Seems: The Journey to Quantum Gravity, translated by Simon Carnell and Erica Segre (Penguin, 2017), Rovelli, a prominent Italian theoretical physicist who currently directs the quantum gravity research group at the Centre de physique théorique in Marseilles, France, sets out to explain the nature of a “3-sphere” in order to help his readers grasp Albert Einstein’s vision of a universe that, given the curvature... Read more
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