I recently purchased a copy of David Ridge’s “65 Signs of the Times Leading Up to the Second Coming.” Though most likely not a complete list, Brother Ridges lists 65 signs that the faithful Saints are to be watching for as written by prophets throughout the course of history. The author categorizes each sign with one of three categories: Fulfilled, Being Fulfilled, or Yet to be Fulfilled.

Helaman has already touched on one of these signs.

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Meditation

So the next stop on the bus ride to the second coming is one that got me thinking due to the first paragraph. I’ll quote a few bits of it so you can see how my train of thought proceeded.

When the Spirit stops working with the wicked, they lose their ability to think rationally...Righteous people are seen as their enemies, and a threat to personal freedom and independence, a threat to the exercising of their agency…evil deeds and cruelty become routine…[emphasis added by me]

Those key points got me thinking about today, don’t get me wrong though there have been isolated cases of evil through out our short history. But it seems to me that there’s an increasing amount of this in our day to day lives. Just turn on the TV, or read the news (especially on the internet) and you’ll understand what I mean.

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Men and Women are Equal Partners

I’ve started reading a fascinating book “65 Signs of the Times Leading up to the Second Coming” – David J. Ridges and I thought I might start a series of posts that opens the discussion for them, because I like to go beyond what he highlights in the book, to more of a let’s show examples in the world. Let’s talk about after effects, etc.

The author makes a good point to say this book isn’t written to scare people and uses quotes from prophets to try and set the tone. I’ll probably put these quotes on each of the posts so that we don’t forget and end up getting caught up in the signs. That isn’t what I want to do either.

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Eternal Family

This is the talk I was asked to give on the family – there might be some mistakes because I was editing it right before I gave it…lol. Also not long before church was to being, I was informed that one of the speakers wasn’t going to be there so I needed to speak for about 20 minutes – I’ve never spoken for that long before and had to bulk up my talk quickly…

I want to tell you a story about my parents.

I t takes place some years ago when they met each other and fell in love. They decided to start a family, but were later devastated when their first born daughter died only hours after being born. Out of her death grew a desire to find answers to why their baby had been taken from their lives and would they ever see her again.

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Moses, well not this guy, but the real Moses

While I was home eating lunch today, no one was home and I got the notion to start reading Moses. So I grabbed the IPod Touch and started reading. I got to the second chapter, specifically version 20 (Moses 2:20) .

And I, God, said: Let the waters bring forth abundantly the moving creature that hath life, and fowl which may fly above the earth in the open firmament of heaven.

It struck me, that this reads as if God is saying the waters bring forth live creatures – including birds. Now I know the LDS church takes no official position on evolution, it got me thinking – strictly subjectively about this.

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Don't get led astray

And saith unto him, All these things will I give thee, if thou wilt fall down and worship me.

This post was brought about after reading about a bill that would in essence force people to be charitable, which got me thinking about all the things that Satan has mimicked. By this is I mean all those things that God has given us that are direct gifts from Him. Without further todo, the list.

Priesthood vs Priestcraft

Priesthood – The priesthood is the eternal power and authority of God. Through the priesthood God created and governs the heavens and the earth. Through this power He redeems and exalts His children, bringing to pass “the immortality and eternal life of man” (Moses 1:39). God gives priesthood authority to worthy male members of the Church so they can act in His name for the salvation of His children. Priesthood holders can be authorized to preach the gospel, administer the ordinances of salvation, and govern the kingdom of God on the earth.

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Inside the Temple

Last week, I came across an article in the Salt Lake Tribune about Temple Worship. While the article was fine, the comment section was full of vile, bitter, sacrilegious offenses. I mean it seriously made me ill reading over it. There were things I hold sacred, written across the internet for all to see. Needless to say, it prompted me to my current topic this week, Sacred.

12 And it was because of the ^apride of their hearts, because of their exceeding ^briches, yea, it was because of their oppression to the ^cpoor, withholding their food from the hungry, withholding their clothing from the naked, and smiting their humble brethren upon the cheek, making a ^dmock of that which was sacred, denying the spirit of prophecy and of revelation, murdering, plundering, lying, stealing, committing adultery, rising up in great contentions, and deserting away into the land of Nephi, among the Lamanites- [Hel 4:12]

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Constitutional Convention

Alright, so I’m going to cheat a little bit here, some may have noticed that “Constitutional” doesn’t exist in the Topical Guide. It’s really more of a stretch verses a cheat. If you look up  the word Constitution in the Topical Guide, you’ll get referred to “Citizenship; Governments”, I chose Governments and ended up with a list of scriptures, one of which used the word constitutional. So you can see how I came to the word I am using.

Over the weekend, there was some discussion, or arguing depending on which side you were on, about what our prophets have said on the matter and what we’re suppose to be doing.

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Are You Still Learning?

Sometime ago, and yes I’ve forgotten what the name of the talk was – but I know who it was by. It was given by Cleon Skousen. It mentioned that David O. McKay wanted to have current events discussed in Priesthood meeting, but ultimately was afraid of the backlash it would cause. Then more recently, like yesterday I started reading (listening) to Jack Monnett’s book “Awakening To Our Awful Situation” that again made mention of being commanded in studying current events along with histories.

I really wanted to put some validation to this. While I have been unable to find much with what I heard from Cleon Skousen, I was able after a little while digging around the internets to put some validation to being commanded in continual learning.

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Contention

It’s Tuesday again, that means another exciting installment of TOPICAL GUIDE TUESDAY (say it like those monster truck announcers). This week, and maybe this is going to be a continuing thing – but I’ve been thinking about my own issues, and I suffer from this affliction, so let’s talk about it and see if we can come up with something.

Did anyone remember to try and thank the Lord for our blessings from last weeks challenge? I did, and even though I didn’t make it all week, I consciously thanked him a number of times and noticed slight changes in myself. I still need to continue with that, but let’s move on and look at another topic.

I went looking for Contention’s definition but came across a number of them that really didn’t make contention out to be so bad. It was merely arguing or debating. So I went looking for it among the teachings and writings of our modern day prophets. Read more…