I’m not sure that I called this Meridian Magazine article of mine to your attention, although it was published roughly two weeks ago: “What Are the Seven Churches in the Revelation of John?” It isn’t coincidental that the article appeared at roughly the same time that I was actually visiting the churches addressed by John the Revelator in Acts 2-3. Today was focused mostly on Churchill’s War Rooms, which include both the underground complex that housed... Read more
Halloween is nearly upon us — here in England as well as in the colonies — so some of you might find this article of interest that my late and much lamented friend Bill Hamblin and I published in the Deseret News back in 2015: “Are Halloween’s roots evil and satanic?” And, speaking of Bill Hamblin, I sometimes receive notes from faithful Latter-day Saints wondering whether the rumor is true that Bill had lost his faith by the... Read more
Just back in from a leisurely stroll with my wife along the south bank of the River Thames near Blackfriars Bridge and the Tate Modern. As the evening came in and the lights went on, the view across to St. Paul’s Cathedral and to the new skyscrapers to its east was absolutely gorgeous. I love this city. Even more than I don’t love New York. It was just a few minutes’ walk from where we’re currently staying... Read more
A new publication has come from Professor Matthew Bowen, via the Interpreter Foundation: Ancient Names in the Book of Mormon: Toward a Deeper Understanding of a Witness of Christ: The names of individuals, places, and peoples in the Book of Mormon are strong evidence of its authenticity as an ancient scriptural record. But these names are more than mere ornaments. By reading carefully and using our knowledge of ancient Hebrew and Egyptian—the languages Book of Mormon writers claimed they... Read more
Most of us were up very, very early this morning for hot-air balloon rides over the temples and tombs and fields on the west bank of the River Nile. Then, after breakfast back on our boat, the Blue Shadow, we headed off for a visit to the Valley of the Kings, where most of us visited the tombs of Ramses IV, Ramses IX, Merneptah, and, of course, Tutankhamen. We then dropped by the temple of Queen Hatshepsut, which... Read more
We landed this morning beside the Greco-Roman era double temple of Kom Ombo, which was dedicated to both Horus and the crocodile god Sobek, who appears (accurately identified as “the idolatrous god of Pharaoh, which is probably not the most obvious or immediately intuitive of identifications) as Figure 9 in Facsimile 1 of the Book of Abraham. (For a very brief discussion of Sobek, see my 1994 Ensign article “News from Antiquity.”) In the afternoon, we landed at... Read more
We were up at 3 AM this morning for the 3.5 hour drive (each way) from Aswan to the remarkable temples of Ramses II and Nefertari at Abu Simbel. The landscape between Aswan and Abu Simbel is absolutely flat and barren, making the familiar drive through the Mojave Desert in California look like a tropical rainforest by comparison. Afterwards we stopped by the famous Aswan High Dam and its predecessor and visited the marvelous Temple of Isis at... Read more
No day that begins with a visit to the pyramid plateau just outside of Giza can’t be all bad. But it has been a long day, including a flight from Cairo south to Aswan, and we need to be up at 3 AM for a long drive to Abu Simbel and back. So I’ll delay reporting on the day’s festivities until at least tomorrow. But I’m going to share with you a few more passages, principally what might... Read more
My wife and I had a lot of fun this evening hosting a former student of mine and her husband for dinner at our hotel, outside on the shore of the River Nile. I maintain my policy of not revealing the identity of such folks, lest, simply because of their association with me, they become targets of my most obsessive critics. However, he is a newly retired professor of botany and evolutionary biology at a university in Texas... Read more
Our Interpreter Foundation tour of Türkiye ended yesterday, so we flew today from the great city of Istanbul to the massive city of Cairo. Most of our group headed home (or, anyway, somewhere else), but some have come with us to Egypt and others will join us here, for a non-Interpreter tour of the land of the Nile, either this evening or sometime tomorrow. It’s always good to be back in the city where my wife and I... Read more
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