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My wife and I took Lou Midgley out to lunch today.\u00a0 He is one of our very favorite people, and it was a vintage visit with the irrepressible Lou:\u00a0 I don\u2019t think that he had been thirty seconds in our car before he was well into a discussion on David Hume, Hume\u2019s famous skepticism, and Hume\u2019s Dialogues Concerning Natural Religion<\/em>.\u00a0 Great stuff.\u00a0 Over a seafood lunch, we also discussed the Second World War, the atrocities committed by the Third Reich \u2014 Lou has just finished reading (and highly recommends) Jonathan Freedland\u2019s The Escape Artist: The Man Who Broke Out of Auschwitz to Warn the World<\/em><\/a> \u2014 the history and prospects of Brigham Young University, and, of course, New Zealand (for which he has had a life-long passion extending back to even before his first mission there).\u00a0 Lou is ninety-two years old now, and he walks a bit more slowly than he once did (with the help of a beautiful Maori-style cane that was made for him out of native New Zealand wood and presented to him as an honoring gift), but he is every bit as intellectually effervescent as ever he was.\u00a0 It\u2019s a privilege to have known him as well as I do for as long as I have.<\/p>\n \u00a0<\/p>\n Some of you, I\u2019m confident, will find this of interest:\u00a0 \u201cAI Temples: What Do They Look Like?\u00a0 This book did not change the way I see the temple. But the insights in the essays definitely did.\u201d<\/a><\/p>\n \u00a0<\/p>\n The Latter-day Saint pioneers entering the Great Basin in the mid-ninetenth-century \u2014 the \u201ccamp of Israel,\u201d initially, led by an \u201cAmerican Moses\u201d \u2014 were steeped in the Bible, and particularly in the Old Testament, and they were not slow to recognize parallels between their new physical surroundings and the land of the Bible.\u00a0 This led to a slew of biblical toponyms, including Zion<\/em> (and, within Zion, the Great White Throne<\/em> and the Three Patriarchs<\/em>), Enoch<\/em>, Juab<\/em> (for Joab<\/em>), Mount Nebo<\/em>, Ephraim<\/em>, Salem<\/em>, Moab<\/em>, and a stream linking a dead salty sea to a freshwater lake that they naturally called the Jordan River<\/em>.\u00a0 Their church itself was studded with priesthoods (of both Aaron and Melchizedek), patriarchs, prophets, elders, priests, temples, altars, tabernacles, stakes of Zion, references to \u201cthe sons of Moses and of Abraham,\u201d the blessings of \u201cAbraham, Isaac, and Jacob,\u201d and the like.<\/p>\n In that light, recent recognition of additional similarities between the land of the Bible and the Zion of the Latter-day Saints may take on an interesting new hue:<\/p>\n \u201cIsrael went from water scarcity to surplus. Can it help Utah and the Great Salt Lake?\u201d<\/a><\/p>\n \u201cStrawberries in the desert: From drip irrigation to vertical gardens, Utah officials learn how Israel does more with less water\u201d<\/a><\/p>\n I\u2019m happy to see this linkage between two places that mean very much to me and to others of my faith, and hope that it will be (both literally and metaphorically) fruitful.\u00a0 In fact, in a minor way, I muse that it might be a harbinger of far more significant things to come:<\/p>\n 1 <\/sup><\/span>The word that Isaiah the son of Amoz saw concerning Judah and Jerusalem.<\/span><\/p>\n 2\u00a0<\/sup>And it shall come to pass in the last days, that the mountain of the\u00a0Lord<\/span>\u2018s house shall be established in the top of the mountains, and shall be exalted above the hills; and all nations shall flow unto it.<\/span><\/p>\n 3\u00a0<\/sup>And many people shall go and say, Come ye, and let us go up to the mountain of the\u00a0Lord<\/span>, to the house of the God of Jacob; and he will teach us of his ways, and we will walk in his paths: for out of Zion shall go forth the law, and the word of the\u00a0Lord<\/span>\u00a0from Jerusalem.<\/span><\/p>\n 4\u00a0<\/sup>And he shall judge among the nations, and shall rebuke many people: and they shall beat their swords into plowshares, and their spears into pruninghooks: nation shall not lift up sword against nation, neither shall they learn war any more.\u00a0 (Isaiah 2:1-4)<\/span><\/p><\/blockquote>\n Thus the prophet Isaiah.\u00a0 And thus, almost identically, the prophet Micah:<\/p>\n 1 <\/span>But in the last days it shall come to pass, that the mountain of the house of the\u00a0Lord<\/span>\u00a0shall be established in the top of the mountains, and it shall be exalted above the hills; and people shall flow unto it.<\/span><\/p>\n 2\u00a0<\/sup>And many nations shall come, and say, Come, and let us go up to the mountain of the\u00a0Lord<\/span>, and to the house of the God of Jacob; and he will teach us of his ways, and we will walk in his paths: for the law shall go forth of Zion, and the word of the\u00a0Lord<\/span>\u00a0from Jerusalem.<\/span><\/p>\n 3\u00a0<\/sup>And he shall judge among many people, and rebuke strong nations afar off; and they shall beat their swords into plowshares, and their spears into pruninghooks: nation shall not lift up a sword against nation, neither shall they learn war any more.<\/span><\/p>\n 4\u00a0<\/sup>But they shall sit every man under his vine and under his fig tree; and none shall make them afraid: for the mouth of the\u00a0Lord<\/span>\u00a0of hosts hath spoken it.<\/span><\/p>\n 5\u00a0<\/sup>For all people will walk every one in the name of his god, and we will walk in the name of the\u00a0Lord<\/span> our God for ever and ever.\u00a0 (Micah 4:1-5)<\/span><\/p><\/blockquote>\n It might be appropriate here to close with a couple of items about Utah, the home base of the Church of Jesus Christ of Latter-day Saints<\/a>, and the effect on society of the Church\u2019s teachings.\u00a0 Both of these items were located in or near the Christopher Hitchens Memorial \u201cHow Religion Poisons Everything\u201d File<\/em>\u2122, which is (as devoted disciples of the late Mr. Hitchens all recognize) inexhaustibly rich:<\/p>\n\n
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