The Gospel According to Jeffrey

Many years ago, I was discussing doubt with a member of my stake . The member in question has a doctorate in Church history from Brigham Young University  (a university owned and operated by  The Church of Jesus Christ of Latter-day Saints ) , and she told me a bit about her experience as a grad student in that area of study. As part of her studies, she read publications that were critical of the Savior’s Church. (I do not believe this was a requirement for her degree, but was relevant to her thesis.) At times, the things she read gave her pause and she took them to her doctoral advisor. These meetings always began and ended with a prayer, and they usually appeased her concerns. However, there was also one question that preceded every meeting: “Before you read anything else, do you study the scriptures of the Restoration for at least 30 minutes per day?” If that question were answered in the negative, the meeting never began. She was instructed to return home, study...

For those of you who aren’t regular readers (either here or on my Facebook page ), I’ve been self-employed and working from home, for most of the last 10 years. While I’ve absolutely loved almost everything about this arrangement, I suddenly lost my largest client in November, decimating my business and making short work of our family’s finances. Since my wife,  Anna ’s, parents and several siblings all live in the  Lafayette, Indiana , area, we’ve usually lived there or, when work took us elsewhere, at least within an hour’s drive, give or take 15 minutes. It’s all my children know; it’s about all that Anna knows! But now, out of sheer desperation, we’ve had to widen our net. The result: last month, I accepted a job in Birmingham, Alabama , over 500 miles away. We’ll be moving there in about five weeks. This past weekend, our family made the 1,000-plus–mile round trip to go house hunting. While there are certainly a lot of positives about the position and the area, on...

“They take their families and depart into the wilderness.” So let’s think about this for a minute. We’ve already established that Nephi and his brothers are married. Those of us who have read the book previously realize that this happened as a result of their second return to the land of Jerusalem, so it would seem that none of them were married before they left. On the other hand, it would seem that at least some of them also had children by that time, else why the use of the word “families”? Everything between chapter 7 (the second journey) and chapter 16 (when they “[take] of the daughters of Ishmael to wife”) seems to have preceded the weddings, which is not tremendously surprising since those chapters consist almost exclusively of Lehi’s vision and Nephi’s reprise thereof, with only chapter 16 relating a different series of events. Thus, they probably spent much of their “sojourn for the space of many years, yea, even eight years in the wilderness” ( 1 Nephi 17:4 ) as married ...

On 31 August, 1991—nineteen years ago today–I stepped into the waters of baptism and witnessed unto my Savior that I was willing to follow Him. It’s been a long road since then, and I’m constantly falling short of that lofty goal. Still, I really am trying to become more like Him, and I guess today is a great day to recommit to that attempt. Back when I was a full-time missionary in Spain (1995-1996), my life was very much devoted to God’s work. I didn’t watch television; the only music I listened to was hymns and classical works; and I spent somewhere between 1-2 hours per day, studying the word of God. It was as a missionary that I finally made it through the Book of Mormon for the first time (though I started it long before my mission, studying it probably too intently to be worthwhile), and as a missionary that I learned so much about the practical application of Christ’s teachings. In two years of service, I never once had the blessing of a baptism in the area I was serving in, ...