Month: August 2012

Are We Required to Live the Law of Consecration, Now?

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I hear this a lot from members of the Church.  In fact just two days ago, I had someone ask me this very question after reading some of the quotes from Nibley in Approaching Zion:

 “So then are we required to live the law of concecration now?“

To that question I would pose a counter question, that might help us arrive at an appropriate answer.  When God reveals a law to man, is it required of man to live it if he wishes to return to live with God?  When viewed from this perspective, I think the answer can be none other than an unequivocal “Yes!” [Read more…]

A Catholic Explains the Mormon Garment

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There is an excellent commentary by Dr. Clarissa Pinkola Estés, who is Catholic, on the LDS (Mormon) garment.  In her article she describes the garment as not dissimilar to the sacred clothing of many religious groups around the world, including Jews, Catholics (Roman and Eastern), Sikhs, Buddhists, Amish, Muslims, Hindus, Jains, and tribal religions.  I too once wrote about the sacred undergarment of the Jews, the tallit katan (and its tzitzit).   [Read more…]

Hugh Nibley Quotes from Approaching Zion

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The following quotes are from Hugh Nibley’s Approaching Zion volume, and were compiled by Chad Merrill.  I am grateful that he shared them with me, and gave me permission to share them with you. They are great quotes from that singular book, one of my favorites of all time, and one which I am currently re-reading for the nth time.

In these quotes, Nibley is highly critical of his fellow Latter-day Saints, in our love of wealth and covetousness, lack of living the law of consecration (and our apparent confusion of it), our quibbling over free lunch, lack of faith in the Almighty, and our misunderstanding the purposes of life. “Zion cannot be built up unless it is by the principles of the law of the celestial kingdom; otherwise I cannot receive her unto myself” (D&C 105:5). Do we truly believe the Lord? What’s our progress report? Please share your thoughts in the comments.   [Read more…]

Fireside Discussion Part III

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Welcome!  This is our third episode of the fireside discussions on the temple, facilitated by Goolge+ Hangouts on Air.  We’re glad you could join us.  Tonight’s discussion is about the first chapter in Andrew Skinner’s book Temple Worship.  You can watch the recording below. Or view the machine transcription here. You can also download an MP3 audio version here.

In this discussion we talk about the temple as being the “ultimate” of our worship, what it means to “serve” in the temple, where temples or temple worship can take place on the earth, the first endowments given in the Nauvoo Temple attic, temple “work” vs. temple “worship,” the fact that the Nauvoo temple was only in use for 2 months (8 weeks) before it was destroyed which makes us reflect on the destruction of the temple in Jerusalem in ancient times, what it means to have a “fullness of the Holy Ghost” which we can attain to in the temple, and the profound importance of the temple in the lives of Latter-day Saints and in our worship in the Church.

Panelists include Bryce Haymond, Gary Anderson, Gerald Smith, and William Hamblin.

MP3 podcasts and Transcriptions of Fireside Discussions on the Temple

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If you are interested in hearing the fireside discussions on the temple we have been having recently as MP3’s, or audio podcasts, instead of watching the videos, the Foundation for Apologetic Information and Research (FAIR) has asked and received our permission to turn them into sound files for the FAIR podcast.  Each FAIR podcast can be found here.  You can subscribe to the FAIR podcast in iTunes here.  Or use this RSS feed link to download the FAIR podcasts.  They don’t have any of our discussions online yet, but they will be coming.

If you can’t wait for FAIR, and would like to download the MP3 audio of these discussions now, there are a number of websites that will allow you to rip the audio from any YouTube video and download it as an MP3.  Here is a sampling: ListenToYouTube.com, video2mp3.net, vidtomp3.com, youtube-mp3.org, mp3ify.com, fullrip.net, flvto.com, etc.  There are also FireFox addons and Chrome extensions that will add links to the YouTube page directly for you to simply click to download the MP3.

Some readers have also asked if these fireside discussions are available as transcripts. Unfortunately, because these firesides are live off-the-cuff discussions, we don’t have anything written down, and we don’t have the resources to have someone go back through the recordings and make official professional transcripts. However, YouTube lets us download the machine transcribed captions that we can share. They aren’t perfect transcriptions because they were transcribed by a computer, and you won’t know who is talking, but they are something. I hope this helps.

Here are the transcriptions from the last two fireside discussions. Simply click to view them in your browser, or right-click the links and choose “save as” to save the file on your computer and then open the file in your word processor:

Part I – http://templestudy.com/wp-content/uploads/2012/Part1captions.sbv
Part II – http://templestudy.com/wp-content/uploads/2012/Part2captions.sbv