by Annette Lyon
I imagine most children of stay-at-home mothers spend far more time with Mom than they do with Dad. It’s a matter of math and logistics. While I’ve been impacted in enormous ways by my mother, Dad has left a definite mark in spite of the smaller number of hours I spent with him. The older I get—and the older my children get—the more I see his imprint.
Read the rest of this article »
by Dave Ellis
My wife recently went to a conference out of town which left me alone with the five kids, for five whole days. That’s like a kid a day, if my math is right. But I wasn’t scared, this isn’t the first time an Ellis man has been left in charge.
Read the rest of this article »
BYU Management Society Announces - An Evening of Excellence: Honoring Service
At the end of each day, when my husband walks through the door, the chorus begins. The toddler squeals with delight and yells “Dada! Dada! Dada!” The four-year-old runs to meet Dad at the car, then hides behind a front-porch pillar to yell “boo” and scare him. His mock terror gets the happy giggles flowing.
Read the rest of this article »
By Sherrie Mackelprang
Dads Have A Lot Of Wisdom
My dad taught me that eggs taste better with ham, gas stations are for buying sodas; ice cream goes with movies; old cars are cool; don’t feel sorry for yourself; help somebody else; and Mom doesn’t need to know everything. Dads share their wisdom as they live and breathe, passing on memories and timeless advice. I always knew my dad was smart, and he’s in that club with a lot if other smart dads. I hope to shed some light on a few of the things that smart dads know.
Read the rest of this article »
No related posts
By Susanna Jones
My favorite childhood memory of my father is both etched in my mind and close to my heart. I remember my father being a handsome man and I looked up to him.
His skin was finely tanned and he had a thick head of jet black hair, always well groomed. He parted his hair on the left side and slicked it all down with hair oil. Dad sometimes wore a hat, and he only had one, so it was old and sagging.
Read the rest of this article »
by Kenneth Long
Although I am a child of this desert, I belong to the sea. I was born in this valley, as was my father and his father. Yet despite deep roots in this desert soil, the lure of the ocean has kept me diving regularly for the past 25 years. One dive in particular taught me a gospel principle that I had learned many times before and have learned many times since.
Yet only when my own life was about to end did I truly understand what it means to dwell in a probationary state, to be ready to depart this life.
Read the rest of this article »
by Lin V. Floyd
Every Father’s Day, as I sit in church listening to someone honor their father, I remember my dad Stanley Vernon’s last day on earth.
Read the rest of this article »
Remembering President Gordon B. Hinckley
by Jonathan H. Westover
As presiding patriarch of the home, fathers have the weighty responsibility to lead the family in righteousness in five key areas of personal development: Physical; Social; Intellectual; Emotional; and Spiritual.
Read the rest of this article »
By Danielle Ellis
Although we often quote the phrase “endure to the end,” do we realize, or internalize, what “the end” means for us, especially while we are “enduring” trials? Enduring to the end means the end of the trial; the end of the trail; the end of our lives; until our eternal reward. It might make our point clearer to say we must endure to the very, very end.
The story of finding Nephi’s land of Bountiful at the end of the trail from Jerusalem proves quite instructive here, as related in Meridian Magazine:
Read the rest of this article »
Most LDS families do an exceptional job of teaching and inspiring their children. However, do our public schools offer the same level of inspiration, or do they extinguish the fire we have so carefully tended at home? While “education” is happening at our public schools, it is more the transfer of information to pass a test, rather than inspiring a new generation of students to hunger and learn for the rest of their lives. Inspiration speaks to the soul, not to the mind, and public education has ripped the soul out of the learning process.
Read the rest of this article »
A Whale of a Tale or… Whata Fluke!
by Anthony E. Larson
It sounds like the script for an Indiana Jones episode, but it’s not. It’s a real life archeological, cloak and dagger mystery with an outcome that should make anyone reconsider his or her views about ancient history and the future—especially Latter-day Saints.
An archeologist by the name of Henry Layard unearthed a curious clay tablet about 150 years ago. It was part of a cache of texts recovered from what was once the Assyrian royal palace at Nineveh, an ancient city mentioned in the Bible.
Written in Cuneiform by a Sumerian astronomer over 2700 years ago, no one in modern times could decipher the writing—until recently, when a computer did the trick.
About half the text on the saucer-shaped artifact, called a “Planisphere” tablet, is decipherable. Half of that surviving text refers to the positions of clouds and constellations—run-of-the-mill astral observations.
Researchers who cracked the code believe that the other half of the text records the movements of a half-mile wide asteroid that may have collided with the Earth, causing the destruction of Sodom and Gomorrah, when “fire and brimstone” out of heaven rained upon those hapless biblical cities.
Dr. Mark Hempsall, one of the researchers from Bristol University who cracked the tablet’s code and Alan Bond, of Reaction Engines Ltd., who calculated the asteroid’s trajectory from information on the tablet, believe its impact may have triggered widespread destruction in the Middle East.
Hempsell said that there are at least 20 ancient myths that record devastation of the type and on the scale of the asteroid’s impact. These include the Old Testament tale of the destruction of Sodom and Gomorrah and the ancient Greek myth of Phaeton, son of Helios, who fell into the River Eridanus after losing control of his father’s sun chariot, which caused rivers to dry up and forests to burn.
For students of the Bible, the notion that easily seen asteroids may have created chaos in the heavens and on the earth anciently should come as no surprise. The tablet is an eyewitness account from another culture that simply corroborates what several Old Testament prophets reported. There is ample evidence to suggest that rogue bodies, some of them perhaps much larger than a mere asteroid, have exploded on, near or passed within a ruinous distance of the Earth.
Perhaps in the Tunguska event of 1908, a mere 100 years ago, we have a most recent version of what may happen when a comet or meteorite explodes in Earth’s atmosphere.
The event began at about 7:15 on the morning of June 30, in a remote region of central Siberia near the Stony Tunguska River. A blue-white fireball—brighter than the Sun, some said—raced across the sky and then exploded with the force of a 10- to 15- megaton hydrogen bomb.
The most likely origin of the object that caused the event was the short-period comet Encke, the acknowledged source of the Beta Taurid meteor shower. On June 30 that year, the shower was at its peak.
The colossal Siberian explosion felled some 60 million trees across an area of 2000 square kilometers. A ring of burnt trees circling the epicenter was left standing. The thunderous sounds were accompanied by a shock wave that knocked people off their feet and broke windows hundreds of kilometers away. If a populous city such as New York, London, Paris or Tokyo had been located beneath the blast, it would have been annihilated.
The event registered on seismic stations across Europe and Asia. As far away as Britain, meteorologists registered fluctuations in atmospheric pressure. The resulting pulse of air pressure circled the Earth twice, and astronomers observed a glowing red haze in the upper atmosphere for several nights afterwards, though they were not aware of the cause at the time.
The eyewitness accounts are compelling and spellbinding. An excerpt from the account related by resident Semen Semenov is typical of them all: “I suddenly saw that directly to the north, over Onkoul’s road, the sky split in two and fire appeared high and wide over the forest. The split in the sky grew larger, and the entire northern side was covered with fire. At that moment I became so hot that I couldn’t bear it, as if my shirt was on fire; from the northern side, where the fire was, came strong heat.
“I wanted to tear off my shirt and throw it down, but then the sky shut closed, and a strong thump sounded, and I was thrown a few yards. I lost my senses for a moment, but then my wife ran out and led me to the house. After that such noise came, as if rocks were falling or cannons were firing, the earth shook, and when I was on the ground, I pressed my head down, fearing rocks would smash it. When the sky opened up, hot wind raced between the houses, like from cannons, which left traces in the ground like pathways, and it damaged some crops. Later we saw that many windows were shattered…”
One of the observations on the Assyrian tablet, according to Hempsell, refers to the asteroid as a “white stone bowl approaching” and recorded it as it “vigorously swept along.” This is strikingly reminiscent of the extraordinary event in Elijah’s time, just before fire from heaven “consumed” not only Elijah’s altar, but that of Baal as well.
In the account of that event, we learn that Elijah sent his servant to look toward the sea, to the west of Mt. Carmel. There, the servant reported seeing “a little cloud” on the seaward horizon “like [the size of] a man’s hand.” Could this have been something similar to the Sumerian’s description of an asteroid as a “white stone bowl approaching” from space?
The “little cloud” in Elijah’s story certainly made a big impact. It brought all the calamities that might accompany an impact or a near collision. “And a great and strong wind rent the mountains, and brake in pieces the rocks before the Lord … and after the wind an earthquake … and after the earthquake a fire ….” (I Kings 19: 11, 12.)
An even more spectacular example is found in Exodus. A notable scholar, Immanuel Velikovsky, writing in 1950, claimed that an errant planet passing close to the Earth caused the plagues, signs and miracles of the Exodus. In his book, Worlds in Collision, he asserted that the “pillar of fire and smoke” seen by the Israelites and the Egyptians was nothing more or less than the head and tail of the comet-like planet, standing vertically on Earth’s horizon. It was that planet-sized comet, he argued, that caused the darkness, bloodied water, immense tides and earthquakes.
Prophecy speaks of intruding bodies and all the destructive signs that might be expected to accompany an impact. In Revelation we read, “…as it were a great mountain burning with fire was cast into the sea.” (Rev. 8: 8.)
Once again, the unmistakable signs of a planetary disaster are recorded in conjunction with that predicted future impact. “… and the third part of the sea became blood; and the third part of the creatures which were in the sea, and had life, died; and the third part of the ships were destroyed. … and many men died of the waters, because they were made bitter. … And the fourth angel sounded, and the third part of the sun was smitten, and the third part of the moon, and the third part of the stars; so as the third part of them was darkened, and the day shone not for a third part of it, and the night likewise. (Rev. 8: 8, 9, 11, 12.)
Apparently, Tunguska-like events have happened repeatedly in the past, as in the event recorded on the Assyrian tablet and others reported repeatedly in the Bible. Apparently, ancient cataclysms that are generally perceived to have been localized events were actually hemispherical in scale, if not planet-wide.
Most disconcerting is the thought that it might happen yet again in the future, if we take the prophets seriously. And, if anyone should give heed to them, it should be the members of the true church.
Visit Anthony Larson at www.mormonprophecy.com.
No related posts
How do you fit “Saturday’s Warrior” and its sequel into the same evening? “With a lot of imaginative writing, a great director, and wonderful actors,” says Las Vegas native, Doug Stewart, producer of the upcoming 35th Anniversary production of “Saturday’s Warrior” and “The White Star.”
Read the rest of this article »
By Brian C. Hales
During the past few weeks, media coverage of the raid in Texas of the compound owned by The Fundamentalist Church of Jesus Christ of Latter-day Saints (FLDS) has created identity confusion between them and The Church of Jesus Christ of Latter-day Saints (LDS). LDS Church members may especially wonder about the differences between the two groups. They may puzzle over the allegations that their religion has lost fundamental principles that are reportedly being perpetuated by dissenters. If something is currently missing from the doctrines and practices of the LDS Church, members want to know what it is and why it was jettisoned. And if the accusations are false, there is desire to comprehend the distinctions. Below are ten important contrasts between the FLDS and the LDS Church, some are historical while others doctrinal.
Read the rest of this article »
Book Review: Powerful Aid in Book of Mormon Study
