Mormon Studies Commons^™

The Isaiah Map: An Approach To Teaching Isaiah, John Hilton Iii

Religious Educator: Perspectives on the Restored Gospel

Isaiah is an extremely important prophet—his words were endorsed by the Savior himself (see 3 Nephi 23:1). Because Isaiah’s words can be difficult to comprehend, religious educators have a significant responsibility to help their students understand them. Perhaps the best opportunity to teach Isaiah in a Sunday School, seminary, or institute setting is during a course in the Old Testament. The next best opportunity is when teaching the Book of Mormon. “Nineteen of Isaiah’s sixty-six chapters are quoted in their entirety in the Book of Mormon and, except for two verses, two other chapters are completely quoted. Of the 1,292 …

A Simple But Powerful Path To Forgiveness (Alma 36), Brad W. Farnsworth

Religious Educator: Perspectives on the Restored Gospel

As children of our Heavenly Father, we come to this earth to be tested—to prove that we will do the things he commands us to do (see Abraham 3:25). Inevitably, we fall short. But through faith in Jesus Christ, we can repent and become clean again so that we may return to God’s presence. The Father’s plan of happiness invites his children to seek his Son with faith, even “faith unto repentance [to bring] about the great and eternal plan of redemption” (Alma 34:16).

Old Books, Old Methods, But Enduring (Even Eternal) Influence, Brent L. Top

Religious Educator: Perspectives on the Restored Gospel

I am honored to address you women and men who take teaching seriously, not just because of your vocation, but because of your Latter-day Saint heritage of education and your eternal identity as daughters and sons of God. Teaching is part of our spiritual DNA. The oft-used phrase “Education for Eternity” reflects the Latter-day Saint view of the importance of teaching and learning. But it is much more than a maxim, it is indeed our theology, as evidenced by numerous scriptural injunctions and examples of the importance of education for this life and eternity. Teaching is in our souls—part of …

Called To Serve: Understanding The Role Of The Woman’S Mission Decision Narrative In Latter-Day Saint Culture And Belief, Rachel Ross

All Graduate Plan B and other Reports, Spring 1920 to Spring 2023

In my thesis I explore the role of mission decision narratives of women in The Church of Jesus Christ of Latter-day Saints. Before 2012, women could not serve missions until age 21. Once the minimum age was changed to 19 in October of 2012, many more women were able to serve on mission as the opportunity was less likely to disrupt their education or romantic relationships. In The Church of Jesus Christ of Latter-day Saints, missions are seen as a priesthood duty for men but a matter of choice for women. This ability to choose and the narrative that follows …

Temple Excursions From Tonga To New Zealand: Stories Of Faith, Mark D. Ogletree, Ph.D.

Mormon Pacific Historical Society

The Church of Jesus Christ of Latter-day Saints has had a presence in Tonga since July of 1891, when Mormon missionaries, Brigham Smoot and Alva Butler arrived in Nuku’alofa on the island of Tongatapu.1 Although the Tongan mission was organized as early as 1916, the Church did not began to grow at a steady rate in Tonga until the 1920s. The first stake in Tonga was created in 1968, and the Nuku’alofa Tonga Temple was dedicated in 1983. However, where did Tongan Latter-day Saints attend the temple between from the 1920s until 1983?

Swiss-American Missionaries For The Church Of Jesus Christ Of Latter-Day Saints In The Nineteenth Century, Cindy Brightenburg

Swiss American Historical Society Review

In the fa ll of 1888, Gottfried Buehler left his home, wife and small children in Utah for a two-year return to Switzerland. He had been ass igned by his church to serve a miss ion in the land of his birth with the goal to preach the tenets of the Church of Jesus Christ of Latter-day Saints (also known as the Mormon church, and hereafter referred to as "the church") to the people of Switzerland, baptize them into membership , and encourage them to emigrate to the land of Zion, or the Utah Territory. From the mid- to late-nineteenth …

Those They Left Behind, Chad M. Orton

BYU Studies

In September 1900, thirty-three-year-old Mary Bennion bid goodbye to her husband, William, as he left to serve a mission for The Church of Jesus Christ of Latter-day Saints in the Southwestern States Mission. Mary, pregnant with the couple’s seventh child, stoically noted his departure in her journal: “Wm left about 11 Oclock. We all feel very sad about his leaving us for such a long time, it looks a long time to be away from his family, but hope he will fulfill an honorable mission, return home a better man than when he left.”¹

The Earth Will Appear As The Garden Of Eden, Terry Ball

BYU Studies

The Earth Will Appear as the Garden of Eden is a collection of essays designed to introduce, review, illustrate, and promote research and scholarship on the environmental history of The Church of Jesus Christ of Latter-day Saints. The book well accomplishes these purposes in an honest and engaging fashion. While essays in edited volumes such as this are often uneven in terms of the quality and the contribution they offer, each piece in this work is remarkably well written and significant. As the book’s introduction explains, Latter-day Saint environmental history is a relatively new discipline, ripe with opportunities and avenues …

Captain Moroni’S Revelation, Duane Boyce

BYU Studies

Moroni reports receiving a revelation in which the Lord told him, “If those whom ye have appointed your governors do not repent of their sins and iniquities, ye shall go up to battle against them” (Alma 60:33). Moroni reports this revelation straightforwardly, but because Pahoran, the chief governor of the Nephites at the time, turns out to be innocent of the charges contained in Moroni’s subsequent epistle and in the revelation itself (see Alma 61), it is easy to think that Moroni’s revelation (or at least his report of it) is mistaken in some way. Indeed, this conclusion would seem …

Into Arabia: Lehi And Sariah’S Escape From Jerusalem, Warren P. Aston

BYU Studies

In his exhaustively reasoned paper “Dating the Departure of Lehi from Jerusalem,” Jeffrey Chadwick moved the discussion of the timing of the Lehite departure significantly further. Those like myself, who have long assumed that the Book of Mormon’s dating for the departure (about six hundred years before Christ’s birth) is simply a round, approximate number, now have additional reasons to see that the dating may, in fact, be literal and that a definitive year for the event might be within reach.

The Use Of Gethsemane By Church Leaders, 1859–2018, John Hilton Iii, Joshua P. Barringer

BYU Studies

Many commentators have noted that The Church of Jesus Christ of Latter-day Saints (herein referred to as “the Church”) has a distinctive focus on Gethsemane. For example, Douglas J. Davies has written that the “LDS interpretation of Christ’s garden experience involves a most interesting relocation of the act of atonement within Christian theological accounts that have, traditionally, seen the cross as the prime site of assuming human sin” and that “Mormonism relocates the centre of gravity of Christ’s passion in Gethsemane rather than upon the cross and Calvary.”

Using Science To Answer Questions From Latter-Day Saint History, Ugo A. Perego

BYU Studies

DNA testing has been employed to study the ancestry and posterity of Joseph Smith Jr., founder of the Mormon movement. Thanks to information found on the paternally inherited Y chromosome, for example, researchers have been able to establish a likely Irish origin for the Smith line. Y chromosome testing has also been helpful in resolving a number of paternity cases involving men who were allegedly sons of Joseph through polygamous unions. To date, all of the tests for these candidates have borne negative results.

Forerunner, Merrijane Rice

BYU Studies

As Isaiah foretold, you will be the voice of one crying in the wilderness: Clear a path for the Lord! Level a highway through this wasteland!

Green Things, Sarah Dunster

BYU Studies

Faith, they say, is a seed that grows. It swells, and as a mother I can say that things inside swelling are not always pleasant. But what sort of growing is always pleasant?

January Night, Susan Jeffers

BYU Studies

Once the snow has fallen, moonlight becomes superfluous.

A Preparatory Redemption: Reading Alma 12–13, Charles Harrell

BYU Studies

A Preparatory Redemption: Reading Alma 12–13 is a collection of essays written by eight scholars as part of the summer 2016 Mormon Theology Seminar, hosted by the Maxwell Institute, to explore the theological significance of Alma’s sermon to the people of Ammonihah, in Alma 12:19–13:20. Few passages of scripture have intrigued me over the years as much as these, so I personally looked forward with great anticipation for this volume to be released.

Mary Whitmer And Moroni, Robert T. Pack

BYU Studies

In June 1829, the Peter Whitmer family welcomed Joseph and Emma Smith and Oliver Cowdery to board at their home in Fayette, New York. They had been brought up from Pennsylvania so that Joseph and Oliver could continue the translation and dictation of the Book of Mormon from the golden plates without persecution. The Whitmer family was then living in a small rural log home bursting at the seams with their large family. These three new visitors placed an additional burden upon the mother, Mary Whitmer, who was responsible for their care. Shortly after their arrival, a “strange person” visited …

Your Sister In The Gospel: The Life Of Jane Manning James, A Nineteenth-Century Black Mormon, Carter Charles

BYU Studies

Biographer Quincy D. Newell admits that she approaches the story of Jane Manning James (1820–1908), one of the first black members of The Church of Jesus Christ of Latter-day Saints, “for what it tells us about religion and race in nineteenth-century America” (4–5) and because it is a “history of Mormonism from below” (135). Such a story, she argues, “demonstrates how a focus on temple rituals and priesthood,” though always central to Latter-day Saints, “blinds us to the everyday lived religion of thousands of nineteenth-century Mormons” (135). Beyond participating in the project of recovering the ethnically diverse past of the …

The Lucky, Chelsea Bagley Dyreng

BYU Studies

I heard the rumors.

Something was going around at school. Also at church. They said it attacks like lightning and leaves you feeling like a grenade exploded inside your body. The one mercy of the ordeal is that it lasts for only twenty-four hours.

The New Testament: A Translation For Latter-Day Saints: A Study Bible, Philip L. Barlow

BYU Studies

Thomas Wayment, classics professor at Brigham Young University, has earned a reputation as one of the most capable and reliable Latter-day Saint scholars of the New Testament and the ancient classical world in which Christianity arose. Educated at the Claremont Graduate School of Religion, Wayment generally addresses Latter-day Saint audiences, whose faith he shares. His writing includes credible work on New Testament manuscript traditions, Joseph Smith’s translation of the Bible, and the historical lives of Jesus and Paul. Wayment has now accomplished his most ambitious project to date: a fresh translation, based on the best available Greek manuscripts, of the …

Bible Culture And Authority In The Early United States, Kent P. Jackson

BYU Studies

In his introduction to Bible Culture and Authority in the Early United States, author Seth Perry of Princeton University writes of “a shared set of symbols, types, behaviors, and vocabulary” that derive from or were influenced by the King James Bible (2). The book discusses the interaction of this shared set with early American society, asserting that the Bible and biblical language were resources that individuals in the nineteenth century used to create legitimacy—that is, authority in their relationships with others. Scripturalization is the term Perry employs to describe how people, language, rhetoric, and other aspects of society obtained …

Lot Smith: Mormon Pioneer And American Frontiersman, Hannah Charlesworth

BYU Studies

This extensive biography of prominent pioneer and Latter-day Saint Lot Smith was written by mother-daughter team Carmen R. Smith and Talana S. Hooper. Both have had previous interest and experience in writing history: Carmen Smith was awarded the Utah Historical Quarterly Editor’s Choice for her 1978 report on the rediscovery of the Mormon Battalion’s Lost Well, and Talana Hooper has published several family histories and compiled and edited a history of the people of Central, Arizona.

Full Issue

BYU Studies

No abstract provided.

Life Beyond The Grave: Christian Interfaith Perspectives, Alec Joseph Harding

BYU Studies

As suggested in the title, Life beyond the Graveis a compilation of perspectives about the afterlife from a range of Christian denominations. The book’s contents were taken from a 2016 academic conference hosted at Brigham Young University. Titled “Beyond the Grave: Christian Interfaith Perspectives,” the ecumenical conference was designed to build understanding among Christian groups. Editor Robert L. Millet noted on the conference, “There has been no effort whatsoever to ignore theological differences between the various traditions, nor was it ever expected that a presenter compromise in the slightest what he or she holds to be true. . . …

At Least In Heaven There’S Food., Jared Pearce

BYU Studies

She was building bread when the building was bombed, a fighter jet or gasoline tank, kneaded to a flat cake.

Front Matter

BYU Studies

No abstract provided.

End Matter

BYU Studies

No abstract provided.

Full Issue

Religious Educator: Perspectives on the Restored Gospel

No abstract provided.

A Savior With A Sword: The Power Of A Fuller Scriptural Picture Of Christ, Kerry Muhlestein

Religious Educator: Perspectives on the Restored Gospel

We have been counseled to draw the power of Christ into our lives and to “begin by learning about him.”¹ The Savior himself commands us, “Learn of me” (Doctrine and Covenants 19:23; Matthew 11:29). In fact, coming to know both God and Christ is a necessary part of receiving eternal life ( John 17:3). Many of our students will naturally conclude that to learn about Jesus Christ they should study the Gospels. While this is necessary, it is not sufficient if we are to come to know who our Savior and Redeemer truly is and thus draw on his …

Ces Missionary Couples Serving Around The World, Po Nien Chou, Petra Chou

Religious Educator: Perspectives on the Restored Gospel

In 1992 the Church sent six missionary couples to Mongolia at the government’s invitation to teach and help improve the educational system in Mongolia.¹ These missionary couples were based in Ulaanbaatar, the capital city of Mongolia. They came from a range of educational experiences and backgrounds and were uniquely qualified to help with the development and planning of higher education in Mongolia.² Their experience and background included “a medical doctor responsible for postgraduate studies at a university medical center, a computer science professor, a business professor, a professor of curriculum development and administration, and an educational administrator.”^{3 …}