news – Temple Study

“The Temple on Mount Zion” Conference

August 17, 2012 by Bryce Haymond Leave a Comment

In honor of Matthew B. Brown who passed away unexpectedly last year there will be a conference next month on September 22, 2012, from 9:15am – 5:30pm entitled “The Temple on Mount Zion.” It will be held at the Provo Public Library. Br. Brown was originally organizing this conference, and I chatted with him briefly about it in the months before his passing. Matt was very excited about the potential in temple studies, and he always had very interesting new insights to share about the temple. I’m glad to see this conference coming to fruition. Thank you David Seely and William Hamblin for organizing this.

William Hamblin shares news of this event on his blog, including the program and abstracts.

With this conference and the other temple studies conference in Logan in October, we should have plenty to discuss over the coming months!

The New FARMS – Interpreter: A Journal of Mormon Scripture

August 3, 2012 by Bryce Haymond 47 Comments

Interpreter: A Journal of Mormon Scripture. (Click on graphic to go to MormonInterpreter.com)

I have been through quite a range of emotions the last few weeks. I’ve felt utter despair, grief, and sorrow, as well as bitterness, confusion, and great disappointment. Through it all I’ve been blessed with comfort from our Heavenly Father beyond measure, and by experiences too sacred to share. It’s been a roller coaster of a time with everything that has happened at the Maxwell Institute. I make no bones about it—FARMS had an immense impact on my life, most particularly as it relates to my testimony and faith in the restored gospel of Jesus Christ.

Recently one of our dear readers asked me what so inspired me about Hugh Nibley, what so captivated me emotionally, spiritually, and intellectually about his scholarship and writings? Here was my response:

[Read more…]

Store Owner Commands Robber to Leave in the Name of Jesus

January 27, 2010 by Bryce Haymond 4 Comments

I received an email today of this interesting video clip. It is a news story from earlier this month of store owner Marian Chadwick from Frisco, Texas, who encountered a hooded robber that entered her store with a gun. The gunman walked up to the store counter and demanded money. The store owner pointed at him and commanded him, in the name of Jesus, to leave the store immediately. The gunman took a step back and told a customer to drop to the floor. The store owner repeated the commands. The robber slowly backed up and fled the store.

In an interview the store owner said that when the robber was leaving he started cussing at them, “as if Satan was walking out the door.”

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=o2YEO-_-Yhw

Human Bodies Emit Visible Light

July 24, 2009 by Bryce Haymond 17 Comments

Very sensitive cameras capture light emitted from the body. Kyoto University, Tohoku Institute of Technology / Livescience.com

That’s right. Our bodies actually emit a minuscule amount of real light. This is not just radiation or infrared body heat, but actual photons are released from the surface of the skin:

Past research has shown that the body emits visible light, 1,000 times less intense than the levels to which our naked eyes are sensitive. In fact, virtually all living creatures emit very weak light, which is thought to be a byproduct of biochemical reactions involving free radicals. ((“Humans Glow in Visible Light,” Charles Q. Choi, LiveScience. http://news.aol.com/article/humans-glow/584160))

New research indicates that the amount of light varies throughout the day: [Read more…]

TempleStudy.com One Year Anniversary

January 16, 2009 by Bryce Haymond 6 Comments

A Wordle created from all the text of TempleStudy.com posts in 2008. Click on the image to see a larger version. Created at http://www.wordle.net/

A Wordle created from all the text of TempleStudy.com posts in 2008. Click on the image to see a larger version. Made at http://www.wordle.net/

One year ago today I published my first post on TempleStudy.com, my first blog. And it has been quite a year. During 2008 I expanded my learning on the temple in leaps and bounds, and was able to share some of that with you as well as learn from you. I met countless new people and made many new friends. We shared new thoughts, interpretations, and discoveries with each other. I attended for the first time several conferences and liveblogged them. I’ve been humbled by your kindness and charity. I was blessed to touch the lives of numerous people as you sent me emails expressing your thoughts and feelings. You have touched me too, in multitudinous ways. And the growth has been tremendous—nearly 100,000 people have visited the website from 170 countries around the world generating over 220,000 hits. Over 500 people have subscribed by RSS feed, and another 254 have subscribed by email. It’s been an amazing experience. I hope your participation with me and our commenters has been fruitful for you, and has given you more insight into temple studies and The Church of Jesus Christ of Latter-day Saints.

To commemorate this anniversary of TempleStudy.com my dear wife was very kind and made a Wordle of all the posts from this past year. For those of you who are not familiar with Wordles, it is an online tool that you can use to input text and generate a word collage with the most commonly used words shown larger, kind of like a tag cloud. So you can see in this image where our focus was this past year. Fun to see. My wife printed out a copy and framed it for me to hang on our office wall. She’s the best!

For those who are wondering where I’ve been the last month or so, I haven’t left. The blogging has slowed down a bit. I think I can blame some of that on our beautiful new baby boy that was born at the end of September. He’s been a joy to our family, and I wouldn’t have it any other way. But it did shift my priorities a bit though, and gave me time to rethink things. I will continue to blog about the temple, but it may not be as frequent. I want to expand my learning into other areas, in addition to temples. Not that TempleStudy.com will go too dormant, but I like the sentiments addressed by Sharon Otterman in her New York Times article on slow blogging. Blogging is becoming a form of expression, and a channel of inquiry and thought, not a 140 character Twitter feed.

So while TempleStudy.com might not fill your daily appetite for news on the temple, hopefully the posts that are published here will be full of meaning. I look forward to sharing new insights on the temple, and learning more from you throughout 2009. Please feel free to send me your thoughts and findings. I’d love to hear from you.

Thanks for a wonderful year!