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A Lesson From Russell M. Nelson’s On-the-Fly Heart Surgery Innovation: Sometimes Revelation Can Be Detailed and Technical

Russell M. Nelson examining a model of the human heart. Last night I read an entire article from BYU Studies out loud to my wife so we could discuss and…

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An Even More Embarrassing Issue Involving the Book of Mormon

I may have erred recently when I spoke of the awkward phrase “in them days” as perhaps the most embarrassing language problem in the original text of the Book of…

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Another Test: The 1835 Doctrine and Covenants Use of Command Syntax and What It Tells Us About the Language in the Book of Mormon

In a recent post examining the language of the Doctrine and Covenants, I found that the Early Modern English style of using “did” for past tense, such a common feature…

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An Old Story Gets a New Face: The Seer Stone and the Original Manuscript of the Book of Mormon

Photo of the long-discussed seer stone used by Joseph Smith. What’s interesting news for many Latter-day Saints is, for some of our critics, simply earth-shattering and hopely faith-shattering for benighted…

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Did You Notice? What the Doctrine and Covenants Tells Us About the Earliest Text of the Book of Mormon

Introduction and Overview For those of us puzzled over the fascinating and fairly strong occurrence (so it seems, tentatively) of Early Modern English (EModE) in the Book of Mormon, the…

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Its … It’s So Easy to Overlook–Another Test Related to Language in the Original Book of Mormon

In my previous post, I looked at the use of the word be in the earliest text of the Book of Mormon in a test to look for unique elements…

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Dark Matter and Joseph Smith’s Statement on the Material Nature of Spirit

My latest post over at the Nauvoo Times (Orson Scott Card’s LDS project with a good variety of writers) is “Mystery of the Hidden Cosmos: Something Big is Missing from…

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From Hope to Despair and Back Again: The Mysterious Power of Complaining

I have newfound respect for the marvelous power of complaining after an instructive experience in which I feel blessed and instructed by the hand of the Lord. Or call it…

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Hannah Ronning, Missionary to China

I recently discussed a book that continues to inspire me, China Mission: A Personal History from the Last Imperial Dynasty to the People’s Republic (Louisiana State Univ. Press, 2013) that…

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A Beautiful Ukrainian Perspective: How Can I Be Useful to the Lord?

Sunday I attended church in Hangzhou where we had a wonderful sacrament meeting that included a young couple from Ukraine who were the concluding speakers. The talk by the young…

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