Upon this rock

 

David Israel Linton

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I'll post on the silence of God tomorrow. Since learning of Chandler's passing, I thought I'd be a little more apologetic today.

Two big claims against The Church of Jesus Christ of Latter-day Saints are 1. the temple veil tore so no more temples (we believe our bodies are temples and that you don't need a temple in order to be able to worship God) and 2. Matthew 16:18 which means to most that no apostasy was possible. What if they are totally missing the mark in both cases?

The first is addressed in this video.

The second (Matthew 16:18) is addressed here:

From the Missionary Discussions YouTube channel:

They came to Cesariah Philippi where there’s an actual physical location called Hades Gates. They’re standing on the shore and Jesus is probably looking at Hades Gates because that’s what he’s referring to. And he says and he says, “Who do men say that I am?” Simon Peter answered you are the Messiah the son of the living God. And Jesus answered him blessed are you Simon son of Jonah for flesh and blood hath not revealed it unto you but my father in heaven. And I tell you you are Peter and on this rock I will build my church.

What is this rock in the context of that conversation do you think? What is the most sure rock upon which a church could be built? Well, he just said he just said that God told Peter the identity of Jesus. So, the principle there is is God talking to people. That’s the only sure foundation upon which the church could be built is that God is communicating to people. And then he identifies Peter as the rock.

He’s actually making some kind of a of a play on words here. And he says, “And the gates of Hades will not prevail against it.” Okay. Yeah.

Hades is the land of the dead. That’s what Hades is, right? It’s the place where all dead people go. It’s not an evil kingdom. It’s just where all dead people go. It’s not an interpretation in Israelite thought. Hades is just the land of the dead. Gehenna and Hades and Shaol. Shaol in Hebrew, Hades in Greek. These are just the lands. This is just where dead people go.

So the gates that hold back the dead won’t prevail against my church. Well, how could the gates that hold back the dead be relevant to a church that can’t die? They can’t be because the church would never die. So, if Jesus meant to say that the church can never die, then he would have just said, “My church will never pass away.” Like he says in Matthew 24, right? ‘My words will never pass away.’

See, he has the language even in this text to say my church will never pass away. But he doesn’t say that. He says the gates of the land of the dead will not prevail against it. Because then what does he do? He goes on and just a few verses later, he goes down and he says, “I’m going to go down and suffer and be killed by the chief priests in Jerusalem.”

What he’s talking about is things that die, don’t worry about it because I have the keys to the gate. I can resurrect them. So if the church finds itself on the other side of the gate, don’t worry. If I find myself on the other side of the gate, don’t worry. He’s trying to reassure them of the validity and the power of resurrection, including his church. So the gate can’t prevail against things that pass away because who has the key to the gates of Hades? Christ, right?

So how could anything that dies be overcome by the gate?

It can’t because Jesus has the key. That’s what’s going on.

Apologist debates in Dilbert

 

(click to enlarge)

Harvard's Global Flourishing Study

 

Nate Zufelt

Sredspnoot8 m90ch3hh2mltcf2ci3c2y3073clg2mlMa208a4lt4806ta17 ·

Harvard just released the latest results from its Global Flourishing Study, a survey of more than 200,000 people across 22 countries measuring happiness, health, meaning, character, relationships, and financial stability. When researchers sorted the U.S. data by religious affiliation, Latter-day Saints landed near the top on nearly every measure that matters.

The findings line up closely with decades of independent research from Princeton, Notre Dame, Pew, and elsewhere.

Harvard finding: Latter-day Saints reported the highest rates of feeling loved by their parents.

Earlier research backs this up. Princeton researcher Kenda Creasy Dean, who is not a Latter-day Saint, found Latter-day Saint teens report stronger relationships with their parents than peers in any other tradition. Roughly 80% of Latter-day Saint parents pray or read scripture with their children, exceeding any other Christian group. Latter-day Saint teens are nearly twice as likely as peers to practice their faith at home, outside of religious services.

Harvard finding: Latter-day Saints were among the highest for being "highly happy."

Pew data tells the same story. Latter-day Saint women have the highest rate of being "very happy" of any religious group surveyed. Latter-day Saint women and mothers also rated their family lives as excellent at the highest rate of any group. Richard Reeves, drawing on Sutherland Institute data, found the share of men who say they understand their purpose in life is ten percentage points higher in Utah than in the country as a whole, a gap he attributed to the state's unusually high rates of religiosity and marriage.

Harvard finding: Latter-day Saints were among the highest for finding strength and comfort from their faith.

The most striking corroboration comes from Notre Dame's Souls in Transition. Most religious groups see a meaningful drop-off in feeling close to God as teens enter young adulthood. Latter-day Saints were the only group to report an increase. The most recent Pew Research Religious Landscape Study found Latter-day Saints are the Americans most likely to report regularly feeling a deep sense of spiritual peace and well-being. They also engaged in prayer, scripture study, worship attendance, and Sabbath observance at the highest rate of any group studied, and held those habits steady while every other tradition declined.

Harvard finding: Latter-day Saints had one of the lowest rates of depression.

A large youth study aligns with this finding. A large randomly-sampled study of Latter-day Saint youth found temple attendance linked to less depression at ages 12, 14, 16, and 18, and lower anxiety at 18. Research by Justin Dyer found Latter-day Saint youth had suicide attempt rates less than half that of most other groups studied. Even LGBQ Latter-day Saint youth showed lower rates of depression than LGBQ peers from every other religious group in Dyer's data.

Harvard finding: Latter-day Saints had the highest rate of weekly religious service attendance.

Other surveys confirm the pattern. Weekly Latter-day Saint attendance sits above two-thirds, the highest of any major U.S. Christian group. Roughly three-fourths report praying daily. Latter-day Saints rank first among major Christian groups in Bible knowledge. One Pew survey, for example, found Latter-day Saints were the most likely of any Christian group to correctly identify Jesus as the one who delivered the Sermon on the Mount.

The family picture is consistent across studies.

Latter-day Saints have the highest fertility rate among major U.S. Christian traditions, the highest share of children living with their married mother and father, and the lowest divorce rates of any major U.S. Christian group. Among those who attend worship services regularly, Latter-day Saints also have the highest retention rate of any major Christian denomination.

Why the pattern holds

These outcomes are what a coherent system produces. James Clear's line in Atomic Habits is that people do not rise to the level of their goals, they fall to the level of their systems. The Latter-day Saint life is built like a system designed to help people love God and love their neighbor. Worship, prayer, scripture, service, and family routines repeat on predictable rhythms and reinforce each other. Boys and girls grow up surrounded by adult mentors who model what they teach. The home does the heavy lifting, not the chapel. Covenants tie all of it to a personal relationship with Jesus Christ that gets renewed weekly and lived daily. The result is what shows up in Harvard's numbers: when belief, behavior, and belonging are this tightly integrated, outcomes compound.

What it adds up to

Princeton's Kenda Dean wrote that it is difficult to read the data on Latter-day Saint teenagers without feeling a hint of awe. The latest Harvard data extends that picture into adulthood. Across happiness, family, faith, mental health, and the relationships that anchor a life, the Latter-day Saint community keeps showing up at or near the top.

Individual experiences vary, as they do in any community. But broadly, those who follow the teachings of The Church of Jesus Christ of Latter-day Saints tend to be happier, in strong loving families centered on Jesus Christ.

What Harvard exposed is what researchers at Princeton, Notre Dame, and Pew have been finding for years. The Latter-day Saint community keeps producing outcomes the rest of the country is still trying to figure out.

explains the Universe logically

One perspective... 

Christians v LDS v Atheists  · 

Kent Bell ·ptdsoSreon0i06M7 135a0y m70:9P16i0Jcg2tm th2h882 u9mu1l5cm2a ·

The great thing about the LDS church,

it’s the only church that explains the Universe logically,

astronomers are just now catching up to the LDS vast knowledge of Space that was announced back in 1830.

The UNIVERSE has no End !

Why ? because it never had a beginning

And neither Did we!

Progression is eternally

It does not have a beginning nor an end!

Jesus is the God of our World

Elohim our only earthly Father is in charge of all space in the Universe

Elohim has endless inhabited worlds with the same thing going on as here,

This plan of building an earth and putting people on it and giving them free agency to choose Exaltation or A Celestial , Terrestrial or Telestial kingdom has been going on for infinity,

And it will continue forever!

God has allowed us to progress, close to his level, that we also can continue to produce children with our spouse forever,

our family’s can be huge and as big as 100 billion offspring, just like our eternal heavenly Patents produced on this little earth!

The enormous children of our Heavenly parents is far more vast than just the 100 billion of this earth.

Multiply that by infinity, that’s how many kids they have!

We are the only Church on this planet that believes this, in fact we know it.

We know it because we receive and recognize Revelation, from Our Father his Son and the Holy Ghost,

our leaders Prophets and Apostles also know this because of Revelation,

Join us in recognizing and receiving Revelation so you to can bask in the glory of true Joy, Joy of the knowledge of your destiny, and your Families Destiny,

There’s more to it than just this brief time on this world ,

We’ve Got An Exciting adventure ahead of us!