Another LDS Church themed license plate cover

  You know you've spotted a Mormon license plate cover when you see the word pre-existence.
  I saw this one in Murphys, California.
  Some church  members dislike the term pre-existence and favor pre-earth life, since we have always existed in some form.
  However, pre-existence to me means pre-earth life existence and so that is perfectly correct and proper.

Primary Kids and Testimony Meetings -- Not like before 1980

Where do LDS Church Primary kids learn to publicly share their testimonies?
Sadly, it looks like for most kids it is mostly only by watching what adults do in a fast and testimony meeting.
When I grew up, you had ample opportunities in a small stage to do so in a junior Sunday School meeting every single month on Fast Sunday.
Not so, since the block time meeting schedule arrived in 1980.
On May 5, 2013, a kid, about age 6, was the first to stand up in my ward's fast and testimony meeting.
He didn't know the procedure, or any formula -- he just talked for 45 seconds explaining how the Holy Ghost prompted him not to open his sister's diary to read it -- and how good he felt about following that feeling.
Yes, it was cute, but it illustrates the shortfall with young church members in training.
Perhaps in my youth there were too many chances for kids to bare testimonies. Now there are certainly far less as the church pendulum of change always seems to swing too far the opposite direction.
Again, we're not talking doctrine here, just policy, that could be changed.
At times, the Brethren appear to want to discourage young kids from standing up in fast and testimony meeting. But, at least these kids go from the heart and don't give a travel log or long, overblown discourse too.
Yes, the church is teaching its under age-12 youth better in most all areas than when I grew up. The big shortfall may lie in testimony sharing.

NOTE: This article and all of the NighUntoKolob blog are NOT an official website of The Church of Jesus Christ of Latter-day Saints. They are the author's conclusions and opinions only.

Ward Names Sometimes Sport Local Flavor

 

 What's in a name? Plenty, if you're looking at the names of wards or branches in The Church of Jesus Christ of Latter-day Saints.
   In recent years, the church has generally moved away from numerical designations, in favor of using more local place names. Sometimes, these names don't include cities or towns.
   For example, one ward in Layton was renamed from the Layton 36th Ward to the Green Leaf Ward. There were once huge fields of alfalfa or onions where most of these ward members now live.
   This non-city orientation has also led to numerous intriguing or off-beat ward titles — some of which may seem strange to anyone not knowing local history or tradition.
   For example, in Weber County, the Hooper 4th Ward was renamed the Muskrat Springs Ward. In pioneer days, Hooper was first known as Muskrat Springs for an artesian well where the critters were plentiful.
   The two wards in Sandy, Ore., located east of Portland, were also retitled. One is named the Sandy River Ward, in honor of a prominent local river. But the other is named the Tickle Creek Ward, a much more odd designation, but also a reference to a local stream of water.
   In Ogden, the 41st Ward was renamed the Waterfall Canyon Ward after a popular canyon directly east of the congregation's boundaries.
   Some wards still use a city name — some of which are already somewhat unorthodox. For example, how about the Moose Jaw Ward in Moose Jaw, Saskatchewan, Canada? Or, the Humble Ward in Humble, Texas?
   There's also the Fred Branch in Fred, Texas; the Carry-the-Kettle Branch in Sintaluta, Saskatchewan; the To'hajilee Branch in the Canoncito, N.M., area; and the Little Flock Ward in Rogers, Ark.
   Here's a sampling of some other ward/branch names that rank among the most unusual out there:

   • Angel Crossing Ward, Layton, Utah
   • Angel Fire Branch, Angel Fire, N.M.
   • Angel Park Ward, Kaysville, Utah
   • Adams-Friendship Ward, Friendship, Wis.
   • Bearspaw Ward, Edmonton, Alberta, Canada
   • Bible Park Ward, Denver
   • Bishop Ward, Bishop, Calif.
   • Bitteroot Ward, Boise, Idaho, area
   • Broadway Ward, five different wards in three separate stakes
   • Captain's Island Ward, Stansbury Park, Utah
   • Crowfoot Ward, Parker, Colo.
   • Crows Landing First Ward, Crows Landing, Calif.
   • Deseret Ward, Layton, Utah
   • Desert Ward, Boise, Idaho
   • Fiddlers Creek Ward, Layton, Utah
   • Gibson Jack Ward, Pocatello, Idaho
   • Golden Branch, Cranbrook, British Columbia, Canada
   • Golden Ward, Golden, Colo.
   • Grapevine Ward, Grapevine, Texas
   • Happy Valley Ward, Portland, Ore.
   • Happy Camp Branch, Happy Camp, Ore.
   • High Desert Ward, Bend, Ore.
   • Hollywood Ward, Hollywood, Fla.
   • Hollywood Ward, Los Angeles
   • Horse Heaven Hills Ward, Kennewick, Wash.
   • Lost Mountain Ward, Powder Springs, Ga.
   • Martha's Vineyard Ward, Vineyard Haven, Mass.
   • Mount Olive First Ward, Mount Olive, N.C.
   • Mount Zion Branch, Maple Hill, N.C.
   • Northern Lights Ward, Anchorage, Alaska
   • One Hundred Mile House Branch, One Hundred Mile House, British Columbia, Canada
   • Peavine Mountain Ward, Reno, Nev.
   • Russian Jack Ward, Anchorage, Alaska
   • Silverbell Ward, Tucson, Ariz.
   • Superior Branch, Superior, Ariz.
   • Superstition Point Ward, Mesa, Ariz., area
   • Temple City Ward, Arcadia, Calif.
   • Ten Mile Ward, Meridian, Idaho
   • Ten Sleep Ward, Ten Sleep, Wyo.
   • Thornydale Ward, Tucson, Ariz.
   • Thunder Mountain Ward, Mesa, Ariz.
   • Tithing Hill Ward, Riverton, Utah
   • Treasure Mountain Ward, Park City, Utah
   • Vineyard Ward, eight different wards in six separate stakes
   • Wines Park Ward, Lehi, Utah
   • Ward Canyon Ward, Bountiful , Utah
   • Zions Peak Ward, Holladay, Utah
   • Zionsville Ward, Carmel, Ind.
 
(Distilled from an article originally written by Lynn Arave, in the Deseret News.)


NOTE: This article and all of the NighUntoKolob blog are NOT an official website of The Church of Jesus Christ of Latter-day Saints. 

What NOT To Do In The Temple ...

OK, I thought I had seen it all ...
I'm in the Salt Lake Temple on May 1, 2013, in a sealing room, about a minute before a nephew's marriage ceremony is to begin.
I'm enjoying the serene, quiet spirit and recognizing that the feeling here is like no other place in the world -- to be in a temple of the Lord.
Then, I  happen to look over to my left, two people down my row.
What do  I see?
A man texting and then surfing the Web!
We were on holy ground. There are just some things that can wait 30 minutes or less to take care of.
Do people not understand there are truly some sacred places?
If a 40-something year-old man is doing this, what about the younger generation? Hopefully they know better, cause he didn't.

--In a related matter, I am kind of amused by the sign at the Salt Lake Temple entrance. It basically says all cameras need to be checked-in at the desk, but cell phones just need turned off.
What?
This is the 21st Century.
That's a 20th Century type policy, outdated and missing the point that MOST photos today are taken by cell phones, not cameras.

--We also don't teach members enough about the Sacrament passing portion of Sacrament meetings. I regularly see members come and go during sacrament passing for no apparent urgent reason. Others, just walk in an sit down shortly after the blessing on the bread, likely having never even heard the prayer that day.

NOTE: This article and all of the NighUntoKolob blog are NOT an official website of The Church of Jesus Christ of Latter-day Saints. They are the author's conclusions and opinions only.

Dangers of Overzealous Women in the Church?

AS some women in The Church of Jesus Christ of Latter-day Saints are apparently pushing to be ordained to the priesthood; and as Sister Missionaries are now on the way to making up half or more of all full-time missionaries in the field, I found this intriguing lecture by the Prophet Joseph Smith from May 26, 1842, warning that women in the church may have "overmuch zeal."
Joseph Smith was speaking to the Relief Society at the time.
The context of his talk (and it should be read in its entirety) not only cautions women against excessive zeal, but also encouraged the spirit of forgiveness and guarding the use of the tongue.
Here, I will just quote the essence of the zeal section.
First, the Prophet cautioned that righteous persons can only deliver their own souls. 
Then he stated:
"There is another error that opens a door for the adversary to enter. As females possess refined feelings and sensitiveness, they are also subject to overmuch zeal, which must ever prove dangerous and cause them to be rigid in a religious capacity -- (they) should be armed with mercy notwithstanding the iniquity among us."
(Joseph Smith, Documentary History of the Church 5:19-21; also in "Teachings of the Prophet Joseph Smith," pages 237-239.)
Joseph Smith ended that lecture with this key sentence:
'"Fret not thyself because of evil doers.' God will see to it."
So, there you have it -- a danger with women in the church, that  Joseph Smith outlined.

Women should certainly have more input, if they are now making up so much of the missionary force.
Each full-time mission will now have a "Mission Leadership Council," which will include not only Elders, but Sister missionaries too.
These "Sister Training Leaders" will serve on the new council.
There is little doubt that Sister Missionaries may find and teach some investigators that the Elders of the Church can't.
Fine, but have women changed some 170-plus years later?
Do they have a danger of over zeal today too?
If so, is that factored into how Sister missionaries are trained/supervised? 

It likely comes down to this: probably too much zeal for women in the church and likely not enough for men.
(Hometeaching vs. Visiting Teaching statistics clarify that women are more eager to do their duty than men.)
I think the Prophet's lecture also outlines a key difference between men and women.


--AND,  I will also stress that women do not RULE in the Church  in mortality and likely never will.

"Let your women keep silence in the churches; for it is not permitted unto them to rule; but to be under obedience, as also saith  the law." (Joseph Smith's Inspired Translation of the Bible, 1 Corinthians 14:34).

To me, this means women do not directly hold the priesthood. It is not their role and any women in the church who have taken out their own temple endowments should understand that -- they even agreed to it.
If not, they either do not understand what the Gospel teaches, or they want to change doctrine.
This is not a "policy," like Blacks not holding the priesthood in decades past was -- this is a "doctrine" of women not holding the priesthood directly.
This is also NOT about the worldly view of "equality," it is about men and women having different, likely eternal roles.
You can't argue against the eternal. 

NOTE: This article and all of the NighUntoKolob blog are NOT an official website of The Church of Jesus Christ of Latter-day Saints. They are the author's conclusions and opinions only.

Journal of Discourses: Treasure Trove of Doctrine

The Journal of Discourses is not some shady, unreliable source of doctrine.

  After all, what's not to like about the equivalent of vintage General Conference talks from more than a century and a half ago?
 Put in context with an early, doctrinally evolving church, the "J.D." is not something to be shunned, or ignored, but rather embraced.
Sure, there are some speculative and opinion kinds of doctrines found within its 26 volumes, but then there was no Correlation Committee back in the 1800s either!
 Talks were often impromptu in the 1800s. I doubt most speakers of the era even had a written text. (Imagine how your own Sacrament meeting talk might go if did not have written notes, or notes on your smart phone!)
 The Journal of Discourses are generally under-rated and yet offer glimpses of pioneer life in Utah and reveal what doctrines the church leaders and members at the time of the mid-19th Century were wrestling with.

I've even noticed that in the past 10 years, occasionally, an official church manual has quoted from the Journal of Discourses.
Now to be accurate, all the J.D. is are re-prints of talks by church leaders as originally published in the Deseret News.
  (A game played in many past church manuals would be that instead of listing the more easily found Journal of Discourses as a reference, the actual/original Deseret News reference would be cited instead, as if that was more accurate ... when it was the same thing.)
  Scribes, or clerks, (like George D. Watt), tried to write down the talks of leaders, like Brigham Young, and they were printed in the Deseret News for a wider, regional church audience to read.
The 26 volumes of Journal of Discourses compiled many of those talks. It was Brother Watt who received clearance from the First Presidency to publish the Journals, mainly as a way to provide him income, but also to send these talks overseas, to church members in Great Britain.
  I've read all 26 volumes of the Journal of Discourses.
  I've also made my own index of each volume, since the official index for the Journal of Discourses is very lacking.
  Sure, I came across some "there is life on the moon" kind of things talked about therein, but if you've read the Standard Works and 
have some solid doctrinal foundation, then the J.D. would do nothing but expand your gospel understanding.
I've compared many of the key Journal of Discourse talks, particularly those by Brigham Young, with the Deseret News and found no disagreement between the two.
However, I once in a while noticed that Brigham Young would come back a week later in the Deseret News and state he thought he was misquoted, or didn't make a point clear the talk prior and then he would briefly try to clarify or correct it.
 Those "corrections/clarifications" are NOT included in the Journal of Discourses, however.

  Some on social media have taken potshots at the J.D., in the summer of 2026, comparing them to the Apocrypha. That is an inaccurate comparison. I've read and studied both and the Apocrypha is extremely poor in both doctrine and history.

 The J.D. is a good supplemental history source, a good look at the lives of Latter-day Saints in the second half of the 19th Century.

Some on social media have made claims that many of the talks were exaggerated in their prophetic nature by the scribes. I've found no evidence of that. If it did happen, it was rare. 

As stated earlier, Brigham Young read what the Deseret News published, He was a busy man, but the Deseret News was the only media around for decades in Utah Territory. (And, the newspaper's original motto, was "truth and liberty.")

  President Young's clarifications I found occasionally in the Deseret News, a week or so after some discourses, proves he was paying attention to what the scribes wrote. If a scribe was embellishing talks, I think President Young would have noticed and even had them removed.

   Some on social media also preach that studying the Journal of Discourses will downgrade your integrity of Brigham Young. Again, I found the opposite. In one line of a sermon, President Young might be explaining some deep doctrine and in the next he's talking about farming, the lifeblood of pioneer life back then.

  I've concluded that when President Young delved into some strange doctrines, he knew what he meant, but that meaning didn't always come across clearly in his discourses. (Again, today's General Authorities have weeks to prepare General Conference talks; some even have script writers/advisors; and they have days after a discourse was given to still make changes before the permanent printed/on-line version of their talk is set.)

  Brigham Young, like any man, had his own opinions and he was only a prophet when acting as such. Move him into the 20th or 21st Century and I'm certain he would not speak off the cuff, or speculate as much.

(You also should not try to bury your own history, but learn from it, though you need to learn to read the J.D. in the context of the 1800s...)

  Today's church leaders have also found it wise to not speculate like their 19th Century counterparts did in the Deseret News/Journal of Discourses.

  Yes, some critics of the Church might use strange ideas from the J.D. against the Latter-day Saints, but the J.D. has more solid doctrine therein than oddball ideas.

  But anyone who takes a shot at the accuracy of the Journal of Discourses is also taking a swing at the accuracy of the Deseret News.
  No newspaper, even today, is free from errors, but even the opinion pages in newspapers spur thought and reflection.

  (I worked at the Deseret News for 32 years and had access to its archives and so I know the newspaper's history -- and I spent my extra time for two decades scouring in the newspaper's vaults.)
  So, keep reading the Ensign and General Conference talks, today's counterpart for the old Journal of Discourses.
  Yet, if you have the time, you will not regret reading the Journal of Discourses, for the doctrinal rewards they offer.

  Yet, note that the J.D. are a place for advanced doctrine, not a place for gospel beginners. A Latter-day Saint ideally needs to know basic church doctrine and have at least some years in the church under their belt, BEFORE that launch into the Journal of Discourses.

   The J.D. printed books are a lot easier reading than the cumbersome newspaper microfilm reading too!
  Note that while virtually all of the past 3 or so decades of the Deseret News are on-line and searchable by Google, the Journal of Discourse's era of the Deseret News issues are not -- and may never be.
 (That's probably because Google-searchable would make some of the off-the-wall segments of the Journal of Discourses too easily found by church critics. Also, old Deseret News of the early 20th Century used to contain lists of excommunicated members and some church leaders have indicated they don't want their descendants finding an ancestor's name on those lists. Hence the blackout on old Deseret News editions.)

NOTE: This article and all of the NighUntoKolob blog are NOT an official website of The Church of Jesus Christ of Latter-day Saints. They are the author's conclusions and opinions only.

Journal Keeping: A Hit And Miss Practice! A 'Diary' Is Better!

I don't know how many hundreds of times I've heard it said in the LDS Church: "Keep a journal!"
The huge problem here -- that practice rarely works.
That's because we are victims of habit and only writing in a journal occasionally means one of two things: you either never write in it, or your rarely write in it.
Even when you do write in it, it is usually so far after some event or experience that you can't recall all the details.
The solution?
Do what I've done for more than 40 years -- keep a diary.
Now I don't mean those pocket size store bought diaries. I mean a full looseleaf size tablet or binder.

                                                   One of my typical Diary/journals


Write in it every day and you miss nothing. Some days it might be a few lines, others many lines or a half page or so.
That way it becomes a habit and your actually do it, like brushing your teeth -- I write in my diary/journal (what it really is) 99 percent of the time on that exact day. The other 1 percent I still catch up and thus it captures 100 percent of my life.
If I want to know what happened 10, 20, 30 or even 40 years ago, I can find it in my diary/journal.
My handwriting was gotten worse over the years, but besides leaving accounts of my good and bad experiences in life for posterity, writing it down helps me cope with adversity better and helps me know where I've been.
These diary/journals have also settled arguments over events over the years and even fill in gaps in my memory.
If I re-read most entries, even those 40 years ago, the accounts usually help me recall that exact day.
I don't have a photographic mind, but these diary/journals do spark and enhance what memory I do have.
So, try it, or you'll leave what my Great-Aunt Iris left my mother, a 200 page "journal" with just two pages written on-- because there was no established habit for her to keep writing in it.
All those blank pages .....

NOTE: This article and all of the NighUntoKolob blog are NOT an official website of The Church of Jesus Christ of Latter-day Saints. They are the author's conclusions and opinions only.