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***<\/span><\/strong><\/p>\n \u00a0<\/p>\n Here are two very recently posted items on the website of the Interpreter Foundation:<\/p>\n \u00a0<\/p>\n Book of Moses Essays #74: The Family of Adam and Eve (Moses 6:1\u201312)<\/a><\/p>\n \u00a0<\/p>\n Interpreter Radio Show \u2014 September 19, 2021<\/a><\/p>\n You can listen to or download the 19 September 2021 broadcast of the Interpreter Radio Show. It featured Martin Tanner, Kris Frederickson, and Mike Parker, who, in the first hour of the broadcast, discussed why the Restored Church will not fail. The second portion of the show was given over to a roundtable discussing the upcoming Come Follow Me lesson #44 (D&C 124). The Interpreter Radio Show can be heard on Sunday evenings from 7 to 9 PM (MDT), on K-TALK, AM 1640, or you can listen live on the Internet at ktalkmedia.com<\/a>.<\/p>\n \u00a0<\/p>\n ***<\/span><\/strong><\/p>\n \u00a0<\/p>\n I hope that you\u2019re aware of the Interpreter Foundation\u2019s series of virtual firesides about the founding prophet of this last dispensation, \u201c\u2018A Life Lived in Crescendo\u2019: Selected Punctuation Marks of Joseph Smith\u2019s Final Years.\u201d<\/a>\u00a0 Please mark your calendar for the next one, on Sunday, 17 October 2021, which will feature Jeffrey Mark Bradshaw discussing \u201cFreemasonry and the Origins of Latter-day Saint Temple Ordinances.\u201d<\/p>\n \u00a0<\/p>\n ***<\/span><\/strong><\/p>\n \u00a0<\/p>\n Yesterday, a friend visually confirmed that the DVD of Witnesses<\/em> is available at the Deseret Book outlet that is located directly across the street from Temple Square.<\/p>\n \u00a0<\/p>\n I expected as much, but it\u2019s good to know.\u00a0 I hope that very many will now be able to see the film who, for whatever reason, did not see it in a theater, and I also hope that many who saw it will want to see it yet again, and to own it for themselves.\u00a0 Watching the film and discussing it afterward would make for a very good family activity, for instance.<\/p>\n \u00a0<\/p>\n ***<\/strong><\/span><\/p>\n \u00a0<\/p>\n \u201cWhat religious groups oppose vaccination \u2014 even during epidemics?\u201d<\/a><\/p>\n \u00a0<\/p>\n I desperately don\u2019t want Latter-day Saints to follow down this road:<\/p>\n \u00a0<\/p>\n \u201cThe gospel of Sherri Tenpenny: COVID-19 misinformation meets Christian nationalism: Her claims are discredited by scientists and politicians trying to stem the spread of COVID-19. But her appeal to faith has a constituency all its own.\u201d<\/a><\/p>\n \u00a0<\/p>\n \u201cPost-Trump, Christian nationalists preach a theology of vaccine resistance: Recent rallies have intermingled resistance to COVID-19 vaccines with calls for a resurgence of Christian influence.\u201d<\/a><\/p>\n \u00a0<\/p>\n \u201cFuneral homes in Idaho are running out of room due to the Covid-19 surge, coroner says\u201d<\/a><\/p>\n \u00a0<\/p>\n From a Latter-day Saint physician at the Stanford University School of Medicine:<\/p>\n \u00a0<\/p>\n \u201cWe owe it to the vulnerable to get vaccinated: Dr. Tyler Johnson says his Mormon religion \u2018teaches me I have a moral obligation to seek out facts and to seek to understand the world as it is,\u2019 which means rejecting vaccine conspiracy theories and misinformation.\u201d<\/a><\/p>\n \u00a0<\/p>\n I expect, by this point, that there are few if any voluntarily unvaccinated people who are still reading my blog who will be influenced by any exhortation on the subject by me.\u00a0 Nevertheless, I persist:\u00a0 Get the shot!\u00a0 Just do it!\u00a0 If not for yourself, for those around you.<\/p>\n \u00a0<\/p>\n ***<\/strong><\/span><\/p>\n \u00a0<\/p>\n The annual Jewish festival of Sukkot (or Succoth [pronounced roughly soo-KOTE<\/em>], or the Feast of Tabernacles, or the Feast of Booths) concludes on Monday.\u00a0 Here are a couple of interesting recent articles about it:<\/p>\n \u00a0<\/p>\n \u201cHow did Jews celebrate Sukkot 2,000 years ago? Archaeology offers answers: While no traces survive of the ancient booths Jews built to celebrate the holiday, archaeology provides important evidence of the centrality of Sukkot.\u201d<\/a><\/p>\n \u00a0<\/p>\n \u201cSukkot is the Jewish holiday that teaches us the joys of doing withoutLiving in a hut teaches us that what we really have is not what we own, but what we are.\u201d<\/a><\/p>\n \u00a0<\/p>\n The second article should resonate with Latter-day Saints, who are accustomed to the practice of monthly fasting.\u00a0 However, it should also evoke thoughts of General Conference:\u00a0 Tt\u2019s no coincidence, I think, that the schedule of\u00a0 Church\u2019s April and October conferences more or less fits the annual cycle of planting and harvest \u2014 which is the same agricultural cycle that influenced the timing of the ancient Jewish festivals.\u00a0 In pre-COVID (and, let us hope, post-COVID) days, Latter-day Saints from around the world would gather at Temple Square in Salt Lake City in a not-too-distant analogy to the gathering of ancient Jews to the Temple Mount in Jerusalem.<\/p>\n \u00a0<\/p>\n And the associations with the temple should be quite plain, as well.\u00a0 The notion of the ascent to the Mountain of the Lord is difficult to miss, as are such things as the ritual washings at the Pool of Siloam (a little pond that is still to be seen in the Arab Palestinian village of Silwan, at the end of Hezekiah\u2019s famous tunnel) that were to be undergone before entering onto the platform of the temple itself.<\/p>\n \u00a0<\/p>\n By the way, Latter-day Saint scholars have argued that the sermon of Jacob that is recorded at 2 Nephi 6-10 and the great sermon of King Benjamin that is recorded at chapters 2-5 of the book of Mosiah (and that, by the way, is cited by Stanford\u2019s Dr. Tyler Johnson at the link that I\u2019ve provided above) were given during the fall festival season and, most likely, during Sukkot.<\/p>\n \u00a0<\/p>\n On Jacob\u2019s sermon, see, for example, John S. Thompson, \u201cIsaiah 50-51, the Israelite Autumn Festivals, and the Covenant Speech of Jacob in 2 Nephi 6-10,\u201d in\u00a0Isaiah in the Book of Mormon<\/i>, ed. Donald Parry and John Welch (Provo, Utah: FARMS, 1998), 124-125, and barring that, for a very concise summary, \u201cLesson 8: O How Great the Goodness of Our God,\u201d<\/span><\/a><\/p>\n \u00a0<\/p>\n On King Benjamin\u2019s address, see, among many other discussions, \u201cKing Benjamin and the Feast of Tabernacles,\u201d a genuinely classic essay (in my opinion) that was published in 1990 by my late friend John A. Tvedtnes (available online but, of course, no longer easily accessible [or even accessible at all] at the website of BYU\u2019s Maxwell Institute), as well as my own little 2014 Deseret News<\/em> column \u201cOctober\u2019s Feast of Tabernacles\u201d<\/a> and Book of Mormon Central\u2019s concise but very helpful 2016 \u201cWhy Did the Nephites Stay in Their Tents During King Benjamin\u2019s Speech?\u201d<\/a><\/p>\n \u00a0<\/p>\n \u00a0<\/p>\n<\/body><\/html>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":" \u00a0 \u00a0 *** \u00a0 Here are two very recently posted items on the website of the Interpreter Foundation: \u00a0 Book of Moses Essays #74: The Family of Adam and Eve (Moses 6:1\u201312) \u00a0 Interpreter Radio Show \u2014 September 19, 2021 You can listen to or download the 19 September 2021 broadcast of the Interpreter Radio […]<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":1019,"featured_media":0,"comment_status":"closed","ping_status":"closed","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[1],"tags":[9788,56,10328,10331,7485,10573,2938,1582,9488,4609,11347,25379,10322,10319],"class_list":["post-92813","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","hentry","category-uncategorized","tag-benjamin","tag-book-of-mormon","tag-booths","tag-feast","tag-festival","tag-jacob","tag-jewish","tag-jews","tag-mosiah","tag-sermon","tag-speech","tag-succoth","tag-sukkot","tag-tabernacles"],"yoast_head":"\n