Search

Filters
There are 11,247 results that match your search. 11,247 results
A couple weeks before the release of the new Saints & Soldiers: The Void, members of the McConkie family were on the guest list with other veterans for a special screening of the film. Though most Latter-day Saints connect the name "McConkie" to the former Apostle Bruce R. McConkie, the invitation was actually extended as a tribute to his brother.
From Utah to South Africa and Venezuela to Japan, the First Presidency has called 53 new stake presidents and their wives to serve in stakes around the world.
For members of The Church of Jesus Christ of Latter-day Saints, it is a paradox that in the four Gospels it does not appear that Jesus spoke about eternal marriage. The idea that marriage in the temple is the ultimate sacrament simply cannot be found. However, this teaching is so central to our understanding of what it means to be saved that it seems like an almost insurmountable contradiction between what Jesus did or did not teach during His earthly ministry and what was clearly revealed to Joseph Smith about eternal marriage.
In our last essay we wrote about the definition of families in the world where Jesus ministered in order to better understand what He taught about His Father’s family, what He called the Kingdom of God. In Jesus’s day families—both wealthy and those with fairly meager means—would be more accurately described as households. They were comprised of not only what we call the nuclear family—consisting of father, mother and children—but also aunts, uncles, grandparents, siblings, and their families. The patriarch controlled those kinship-bound members of the household as well as his slaves, bondsmen, servants, laborers, and a whole host of other “retainers” whose numbers depended on the household’s economic status.
Professor Obery M. Hendricks Jr., a scholar specializing in the historical context for the world of Jesus, has observed that “hunger, indebtedness, disease, fear, insecurity, social alienation and seething resentment . . . took their toll upon the morale of the [poor] of Israel.” In addition, he said, these conditions contributed to overwhelming crime rates throughout the region.
In the decade it took for us to research, pray over, write, and re-write 18 essays about the Messiah, we read works by New Testament scholars. One whose specialty was social and religious customs in His day had a formula; he said that seeing the content or plot of a scripture in the context of its time and place revealed important messages. Simply put, he said, “Content in context is meaning.”
In New Testament times, family life centered on households rather than on what we would call the nuclear family—a father, mother, and their children. Wealthy households were much larger than the vast majority of households; however, all shared some common characteristics. They included not only kinship members of the extended family but also attached servants, slaves, laborers, and in the case of those with extreme wealth, numbers of individuals considered to be “retainers”—accountants, wet nurses, gardeners, tailors, barbers, cooks, bakers, guards, and even secretaries and teachers, musicians, etc. Everyone had a place—except the outcasts, whom Jesus loved and healed. They included vast numbers of people who belonged to no household. They were those who were diseased or considered grossly sinful.
How can we find answers to difficult questions or receive inspiration, even while we sleep? Dr. Judith Orloff offers some interesting insight and suggestions.