The Interpreter Foundation Podcast

 

In this episode of The Interpreter Radio Show, our hosts are Spencer Kraus, Hales Swift, Brent Schmidt, and Martin Tanner. They discuss Come, Follow Me New Testament lesson 44, Church finances, and General Conference. You can listen to or download the October first broadcast of the Interpreter Radio Show below. These audio tracks are also included in our podcast feed (https://interpreterfoundation.org/feeds/podcast).

The “New Testament in Context” portion of this show, for the Come, Follow Me New Testament lesson 44, “Be Thou an Example of the Believers” covering 1 & 2 Timothy, Titus, and Philemon, will also be posted separately on Tuesday, October 17.

The Interpreter Radio Show can be heard Sunday evenings from 7 to 9 PM (MDT), on K-TALK, AM 1640, or you can listen live on the Internet at ktalkmedia.com.

Original air date: October 1, 2023. These recording have been edited to remove commercial breaks.

The New Testament in Context Lesson 44: “Be Thou an Example of the Believers” covering 1 & 2 Timothy, Titus, and Philemon

Gospel Advocacy: Church Finances

Podcast: Download

Discussion: General Conference

Podcast: Download

The Interpreter Radio Show is a weekly discussion of matters of interest to the hosts, guests, and callers of the show. The views expressed on the Interpreter Radio Show are those of the individuals involved and do not necessarily reflect the views of the Interpreter Foundation, nor should statements made on the show be construed as official doctrinal statements of the Church.

 

Abstract: Although Joseph Smith has been credited with “approximately seven full school years” of district schooling, further research supports that his education consisted of basic instruction in “reading, writing and the ground rules of arithmetic” comprising “less than two years of formal schooling.” The actual number of terms he experienced in common schools in upstate New York is probably less critical since the curricula in district schools did not then teach creative writing, composition, or extemporaneous speaking. If Joseph Smith learned how to compose and dictate a book, extracurricular activities would likely have been the training source. Six of those can be identified: (1) private Bible studies, (2) Hyrum Smith’s possible tutoring in 1813, (3) participation in local religious activities, (4) involvement with the local juvenile debate club, (5) occasional family storytelling gatherings, and (6) brief participation as an exhorter at Methodist meetings. Three of his teachers in Kirtland in 1834–1836 recalled his impressive learning ability, but none described him as an accomplished scholar. A review of all available documentation shows that no acquaintance at that time or later called him highly educated or as capable of authoring the Book of Mormon. Despite its current popularity, the theory that Joseph Smith possessed the skills needed to create the Book of Mormon in 1829 is contradicted by dozens of eyewitness accounts and supported only by minimal historical data.

As a controversial personality of the early nineteenth century, Joseph Smith Jr. has been called a prophet, treasure seeker, translator, city organizer, prisoner, freemason, banker, lieutenant general, religious genius, polygamist, martyr, and author. This last title has generated controversy because Joseph Smith reported he was not the author of the Book of Mormon, instead declaring its words came to him by “the gift [Page 2]and power of God.”1 Critics reject this claim, asserting that naturalistic explanations can answer the question, “Where did all the words come from?” For example, Richard S. Van Wagoner refers to “secondary literature of some 6,000-plus titles” that scrutinize the Book of Mormon and Joseph Smith’s “empirical claims.” Then Van Wagoner confidently asserts: “The main conclusion of this particular growing body of work is that there is no element in the Book of Mormon that cannot be explained naturalistically.”2

John L. Sorensen summarizes some overall concerns: “The question of the origin of the Book of Mormon is not a trivial one for scholars. Hundreds of both popular and scholarly publications have appeared related to this question, and they continue to be issued. However, only a few theories about how the book came into being have been taken seriously by conventional scholars.”3 Although skeptics may have mixed and matched their hypotheses at times, six primary naturalistic theories have been,

Fifteen months after the Church of Christ’s inception in April 1830, the young prophet Joseph Smith received a revelation indicating that Independence, Jackson County, Missouri, was to be the “center-place” of Zion and a “spot for a temple is lying westward, upon a lot that is not far from the court-house.” Dedication of this spot for the millennial temple soon followed on August 3, 1831, by Joseph Smith and Sidney Rigdon. A building sketch was prepared in Kirtland, Ohio, and sent to church leaders in Independence in June 1833. Smith also forwarded his plat for the City of Zion, showing 24 temples at its center and giving an explanation for their use. Tragically, the church was driven en masse out of Jackson County only months later. Reclaiming the original Partridge purchase of 63 1/4 acres (which, of course, included the dedicated millennial temple site) in December 1831, and known as the Temple Lot became an early driving force for the membership of the church.

A physical effort to reclaim the saints land and possessions in Jackson County was organized in 1834 by Joseph Smith and became known as “Zion’s Camp.” After traveling 900 miles from Kirtland, Ohio, and poised on the north bank of the Missouri River looking toward Jackson County, Smith’s two hundred armed men were unable to proceed for various reasons. While contemplating what to do, given the reality of their situation, Smith received a revelation to “wait for a little season, for the redemption of Zion.” That poignant phrase – “the redemption of Zion” – became a tenet of the church thereafter. In the years following the martyrdom of the Prophet Joseph Smith (1844) and the subsequent “Scattering of the Saints,” three independent Expressions of the Restoration returned to Independence to reclaim or redeem the Temple Lot in fulfillment of latter-day scripture. The first church to re-establishment a physical presence in Jackson County was the Church of Christ in 1867, followed by the Reorganized Church of Jesus Christ of Latter Day Saints (now Community of Christ) in 1877, and later by the Church of Jesus Christ of Latter-day Saints in 1900. Indeed, the “Redemption of Zion” was undertaken in a most literal sense. Over the years the Temple Lot Property was re-purchased, lot-by-lot, by these three churches as opportunities presented themselves, and over time they began building facilities on their acquired property. We shall examine each of their efforts to build the House of the Lord.

Presented at:

2020 Temple on Mount Zion ConferenceSaturday, November 7, 2020https://interpreterfoundation.org/conferences/2020-temple-on-mount-zion-conference/

Conference Proceedings:

The Temple: Past, Present and Future at https://interpreterfoundation.org/books/the-temple-past-present-and-future/

Listen to an audio recording of this talk:

  Download audio recording

 

 

Transcript

 

In the September 24th Come, Follow Me segment of the Interpreter Radio Show, our hosts Steve Densley, John Thompson, and Don Bradley discuss New Testament lesson 43, “Perfect That Which Is Lacking in Your Faith” covering 1st and 2nd Thessalonians.

You can listen to or download the New Testament in Context segment of the September 24 broadcast of the Interpreter Radio Show below. It will also be included in our podcast feed (https://interpreterfoundation.org/feeds/podcast). The other segments of the September 24 radio show can be accessed at https://interpreterfoundation.org/interpreter-radio-show-september-24-2023.

The Interpreter Radio Show can be heard Sunday evenings from 7 to 9 PM (MDT), on K-TALK, AM 1640, or you can listen live on the Internet at ktalkmedia.com.

 

Original air date: September 24, 2023. This recording has been edited to remove commercial breaks.

The Interpreter Radio Show is a weekly discussion of matters of interest to the hosts, guests, and callers of the show. The views expressed on the Interpreter Radio Show are those of the individuals involved and do not necessarily reflect the views of the Interpreter Foundation, nor should statements made on the show be construed as official doctrinal statements of the Church.

 

 

In this episode of The Interpreter Radio Show, our hosts are Steve Densley, John Thompson, Don Bradley with guest Nathan Arp. They discuss Nathan’s recent article in Interpreter: A Journal of Latter-day Saint Faith and Scholarship and discuss Come, Follow Me New Testament lesson 43 during the second hour. You can listen to or download the September 24th broadcast of the Interpreter Radio Show below. These audio tracks are also included in our podcast feed (https://interpreterfoundation.org/feeds/podcast).

The “New Testament in Context” portion of this show, for the Come, Follow Me New Testament lesson 43, “Perfect That Which Is Lacking in Your Faith” covering 1st and 2nd Thessalonians, will also be posted separately on Tuesday, October 10.

The Interpreter Radio Show can be heard Sunday evenings from 7 to 9 PM (MDT), on K-TALK, AM 1640, or you can listen live on the Internet at ktalkmedia.com.

Original air date: September 24, 2023. These recording have been edited to remove commercial breaks.

Discussion: “Mormon’s Narrative Strategies to Provide Literary Justice for Gideon” with author Nathan Arp

Gospel Advocacy: Church Finances

Podcast: Download

The New Testament in Context Lesson 43: “Perfect That Which Is Lacking in Your Faith” covering 1 & 2 Thessalonians

Podcast: Download

The Interpreter Radio Show is a weekly discussion of matters of interest to the hosts, guests, and callers of the show. The views expressed on the Interpreter Radio Show are those of the individuals involved and do not necessarily reflect the views of the Interpreter Foundation, nor should statements made on the show be construed as official doctrinal statements of the Church.

 

Abstract: Hints of a different and better world — sometimes dimly remembered, often intuited, and commonly hoped for — and of a glorious, mighty power behind the world in which we currently live, are all around us. They are not so powerful that they cannot be missed or even ignored, but they have been and remain present for those with eyes to see, ears to hear, and hearts to feel. As he always does, God has not left us without witnesses but he does not seek to compel. He loves us, but he also respects our agency.

It seems to have been the French Protestant Reformer John Calvin who coined the term sensus divinitatis. By it, he intended an innate sense of the existence of, and to at least some degree, the nature of God.

That there exists in the human mind and indeed by natural instinct, some sense of Deity [sensus divinitatis], we hold to be beyond dispute, since God himself, to prevent any man from pretending ignorance, has endued all men with some idea of his Godhead… this is not a doctrine which is first learned at school, but one as to which every man is, from the womb, his own master; one which nature herself allows no individual to forget.2

This instinctual sense of the divine is not to be confused with explicit revelation, although it might, in a Latter-day Saint view, be regarded as a particular type of revelation given to all. It is certainly distinct from a conclusion that one might reach as the result of an argument or as [Page viii]a reasoned deduction from a series of propositions. Instead, it is, in a sense, an immediate perception, unreasoned, even pre-rational.3

The English Romantic poet William Wordsworth is an especially good representative of this intuitive sense of the divine, and he often alludes to the theme. In his “Lines Composed a Few Miles above Tintern Abbey, On Revisiting the Banks of the Wye during a Tour. July 13, 1798,” for example, he writes:

The sounding cataractHaunted me like a passion: the tall rock,The mountain, and the deep and gloomy wood,Their colours and their forms, were then to meAn appetite: a feeling and a love. . . .And I have felt A presence that disturbs me with the joyOf elevated thoughts; a sense sublimeOf something far more deeply interfused,Whose dwelling is the light of setting suns,And the round ocean and the living air,And the blue sky, and in the mind of man:A motion and a spirit, that impelsAll thinking things, all objects of all thought,And rolls through all things.4

Still, although Wordsworth is an eloquent spokesman for a sensus divinitatis, he is far from alone. Consider, for example, these characteristically simple words from the American poet Emily Dickinson:

I never saw a moor,I never saw the sea;Yet know I how the heather looks,And what a wave must be.

I never spoke with God,Nor visited in heaven;[Page ix]Yet certain am I of the spotAs if the chart were given.

Or these breathless lines from a very different poet, e. e. cummings:

i thank You God for most this amazingday: for the leaping greenly spirits of treesand a blue true dream of sky; and for everythingwhich is natural which is infinite which is yes

(i who have died am alive again today,

Using a close reading of 3 Nephi 19, I will examine the interrelated and additive nature of each of the rituals in their temple context as described in 3 Nephi 19, culminating in Jesus’s high priestly intercessory prayer and discuss Mormon’s possible authorial intent in his presentation of these rituals. I will further explore the relationship of ritual purification and sanctification in the Hebrew Bible (and elsewhere in scripture) and the previous lexicography of q-d-š. I will compare the high priestly prayers of Jesus in John 17 and 3 Nephi 19, and analyze the results of Jesus’s prayer in 3 Nephi 19 on the worshipers at the temple in Bountiful. Lastly, I will explain the aforementioned implications q-d-š—sanctification and holiness—as a state of divine belonging (cf. qdš lyhwh = “a state of divine belonging to the Lord”) for ordinances and temple worship and our identity as “Latter-day Saints.”

Presented at:

2020 Temple on Mount Zion ConferenceSaturday, November 7, 2020https://interpreterfoundation.org/conferences/2020-temple-on-mount-zion-conference/

Conference Proceedings:

The Temple: Past, Present and Future at https://interpreterfoundation.org/books/the-temple-past-present-and-future/

Listen to an audio recording of this talk:

  Download audio recording

 

 

Transcript