Month: March 2013

Orson Scott Card’s Short Story on the Law of Consecration

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Orson Scott Card, 16 February 2008. Photo from Nihonjoe.

Orson Scott Card, 16 February 2008. Photo from Nihonjoe.

I don’t know how I missed this until now. Orson Scott Card published a fantastic short story/essay on the law of consecration back in 1993 entitled “Consecration: A Law We Can Live With.” In it he eloquently writes a parable of a man who envisions some scriptures as a Book of Mormon figure might have written them if they had lived in our day, together with the man’s own life experiences in consecrating. It is a well written, unique and profound piece, one that gets to the heart of what consecration should mean to us today.

Too often I perceive we think that once our 10% of tithing is paid, and perhaps some token offerings, the rest is ours to keep. We’ve done our duty. Indeed, we can personally take in our millions, as long as 10% is skimmed off the top like cream off milk. What’s left, however, is a fat-free diet of the gospel of Jesus Christ, which doesn’t nourish the soul, nor feed the spirit. Ten percent is a far cry from consecration, of any amount. As Elder Neal A. Maxwell taught:

God seeks to have us become more consecrated by giving everything. Then, when we come home to Him, He will generously give us ‘all that [He] hath’ (D&C 84:38). (“Swallowed Up in the Will of the Father,” emphasis added.)

Of course we can, and should, consecrate much more than our monetary means. Elder Jeffrey R. Holland echoed Elder Maxwell’s thoughts:

We must be willing to place all that we have—not just our possessions (they may be the easiest things of all to give up), but also our ambition and pride and stubbornness and vanity—we must place it all on the altar of God, kneel there in silent submission, and willingly walk away. (“The Will of the Father in All Things,” emphasis added.)

And Hugh Nibley was never at a loss of words on this topic:

There is quite a difference between consecrating 10 percent of your net gain to the building up of the kingdom and consecrating your time, talents, and everything you have been blessed with up to this time to the building up of the kingdom of God. (“Law of Consecration,” emphasis added.)

BYU Studies Articles on the Temple

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byu_studies

BYU Studies

John W. Welch, Editor in Chief of BYU Studies, has informed me of a comprehensive list of articles dealing with the temple that have been published in the journal BYU Studies over the years. This is a fantastic collection of LDS scholarship on the temple, dealing with a wide variety of temple-related topics, including book reviews, with direct links to the articles on the BYU Studies website.

After clicking on the links below, you can click on the “Download Article/PDF: FREE” link on the right-hand side to download, read, and print a PDF of each article. The majority of these articles are free to download and read, but a few recently published articles might have a small price attached (BYU Studies subscribers can log in to the website to read these articles also for free).

The list is in alphabetical order by title. [Read more…]

“Enoch and the Temple” Conference Videos Now Available

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The conference “Enoch and the Temple,” which took place on February 19 and 22, 2013, in Logan, Utah, and Provo, Utah, respectively, was filmed. The videos are now available for free viewing in 1080p HD resolution, on the Academy for Temple Studies YouTube channel, the Academy’s website TempleStudies.org, as well as embedded below. [Read more…]

Was Baptism for the Dead Practiced Deep Inside the Walls of St. Paul’s Basilica?

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There is an email being forwarded around that claims that there is a baptismal font deep inside the Basilica of St. Paul that was used for the purposes of baptism for the dead. Here is the text of the original email:

Photos from the email

Photos from the forwarded email. (Click to enlarge)

This photo was taken by Kevin Barton, grandson of Keith Barton, a Stake Patriarch, when Kevin was on his mission to Italy in 2001.  These pictures were taken in Rome at St. Paul’s Cathedral which is centuries old.  Kevin found a chained off area of the Cathedral, which he shouldn’t have entered but did, and discovered this old unused, I’m sure for hundreds of years, baptismal font with a mosaic inscription above it indicating it was used for  baptisms for the dead..  There are probably more old Cathedrals in Italy (If they haven’t been remodeled) that still have these closed off fonts that were used centuries ago..  I wonder why they stopped ?  This is truly profound and  amazing.. ((Email in my possession.))

Included in the email are a couple very blurry/grainy photos showing the wall inscription and the nearby baptismal font, with labels overlaid showing the purported translation and correlation.  These photos are shown here on the right (click to enlarge).

On the surface this sounds really exciting for LDS temple studies! Here we might have ancient evidence for baptism for the dead, mysteriously hidden from public view. But not so fast. Let’s do the requisite research. [Read more…]

Sistine Chapel as a 3D Virtual Reality Simulation

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A screen capture of my recreation of the Sistine Chapel in virtual reality.

A screen capture of my recreation of the Sistine Chapel in virtual reality. (Click to enlarge)

Seven years ago in 2006 I did a project as part of a course at BYU. The object of the project was to produce something substantially creative. I decided to recreate the Sistine Chapel as a computer generated virtual simulation. Since most people may not have a chance to visit the real Sistine Chapel, this would give them a chance to see this remarkable place, examine it, walk around, and view the masterpieces that adorn its walls. So I recreated the Sistine Chapel in a format called Virtual Reality Markup Language (VRML), reconstructing all of the high resolution photos I could find of the artwork on the walls and ceiling. Of course, the simulation falls short of the actual experience, as most simulations do, but it gives a good approximation. [Read more…]