Mormon Heretic

First of all, I have to point to the Teacher, at Gospel Doctrine Underground, for introducing this topic to me. Previous to his discussion, I had not given much thought to when the Melchizedek Priesthood (MP) was restored. I just finished a book called “The Mormon Hierarchy: Origins of Power” by D. Michael Quinn which goes into great detail on this subject. (Quinn has a similarly titled book called “Extensions of Power.”)

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Ok, I have a tendency to get into some pretty deep stuff here, and so every once in a while, I need to take a break.  Over the weekend, our local PBS affiliate broadcast Hotel Rwanda, with Don Cheadle.  It is the true story of the Rwandan Civil War of around 1994, with Don portraying Paul Rusesabagina, a hotel manager who housed over a thousand Tutsi refugees during their struggle against the Hutu militia in Rwanda.  It was so good, yet horrifying, that I had trouble sleeping that night.

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In part 5 of my Sidney Rigdon series, I wrote that I thought I was done writing about Sidney Rigdon.  But alas, I have been given a challenge to refute the Spaulding Manuscript theory by Doug G, so it looks like I’m temporarily back to talking about Sidney Rigdon.

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So, I came across an interview of Richard Bushman at the Pew Research Forum, about both early and modern Mormon politics.  I’ve also been reading a book called The Mormon Hierarchy: Origins of Power by D Michael Quinn on the early leadership of the church.  I want to combine the 2 sources, and talk about Joseph Smith’s presidential plans of 1844.  First, let me quote Bushman.
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I’ve been pleasantly surprised at the number of positive responses of the Malay Theory in my previous post.  In discussing the post with Ralph Olsen, the author of this theory, he has given me permission to post his unpublished manuscript!  Ralph is looking for a sort of “peer review”, where people give honest feedback about how the article could be improved.  He would also like to further promote the theory.  So, feel free to download it here, and post your comments, questions, thoughts, or concerns here.  (Please be patient!   The document is about 300 pages long, and nearly 20 MB in size, so it will take some time.)

Check out this map, and a few other links! Read more…

Ok, I’ve been wanting to add photos to my comments for quite some time, but didn’t know how to do it. So, I must give thanks to Andrew S and Irresistible (Dis)Grace for his post titled, A Junk Post about my commenting frustrations, where he compares the differences between WordPress and Blogspot.  I agree with Andrew in that I really like WordPress more than Blogspot, but this whole gravatar thing has really been bugging me, because it is one of the few things that Blogspot does better than WordPress.  So, if you would like to have a picture next to your comment (on this and other WordPress blogs), here’s how to do it!

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The Faithful Dissident recently had a post commemorating her 1^st anniversary as a blogger.  Since I let my 1^st anniversary pass without fanfare (in January), I decided to do a sort of anniversary when I reached my 100^th post.

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So, I’ve been checking my blog stats, and with Easter upon us, it seems my post from last year about why Mormon’s don’t celebrate Easter is getting the most hits.  While last year’s post was a little negative-that I think Mormon celebrations of Easter are lacking compared to other Christians’ Easter celebrations, I hope to talk more about some scholarly insights into Jesus this year as we discuss Easter.

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In the movie, Raiders of the Lost Ark, the Nazi’s are looking for the Lost Ark of the Covenant.  They have an image of a map burned into the hand of a Nazi scientist, so they think they know where the Ark is.  However, there is a critical piece of information missing which is found on the other side of the medallion, which only Indiana Jones has.  Indiana exclaims, “They’re digging in the wrong place!”

Book of Mormon geography is one of my favorite topics, and it’s been a while since I talked about it.  Wouldn’t it be cool to find some archaeological evidence?  There are over 100 theories concerning Book of Mormon geography.  Since they can’t all be correct, obviously, some scientists are digging in the wrong place.  Let’s review some of the theories again.

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With little fanfare over the weekend, President Uchdorf announced the call of only the second black general authority, Joseph Sitate of Nairobi, Kenya.  He was called to the First Quorum of 70, as well as Yoon Hwan Choi of Seoul, Korea.

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I’ve been talking about doing a post about Abraham for a long time. People often reference Abraham when talking about things like Joshua’s Unholy War, the Priesthood Ban, or polygamy. Usually the reference is to the sacrifice of Isaac.

So, this post is to serve two purposes: (1) to show some different perceptions about the sacrifice of Isaac, (as well as some other strange stories of Abraham), and (2) to introduce some new information from Muslim, Christian, Jewish, and archaeological scholars. I’ve had fun learning about it, and hope you do to. While I believe Abraham is a prophet, I find some things that Abraham did as troubling, and I’ll point them out below.

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