Know your faith!

Impressive!

Know what you believe:

http://www.boston.com/news/local/articles_of_faith/2009/03/mormon_tv_harva.html

http://vimeo.com/2120177

Mormon Temples

You may have heard a lot in the news recently about the Mormons (members of the Church of Jesus Christ of Latter Day Saints) and their belief in temple worship. Like Frank Moore Cross, professor of Ancient History at Harvard, states in the following video:

"Someone who does not know much about temples, and Mormons building temples, should be directed to the Bible."

The Old and New Testament are full of descriptions of temples and their purpose. Of course, since the coming of Jesus Christ and the fulfillment of the Mosaic Law, temples serve a different, although identical, or parallel purpose: providing a sacred place where we can go to make an offering to the Lord.

The Savior asks us to come unto him and live as He does. His joy is fulfilled in our desire to seek others' welfare as we commhttp://www.blogger.com/img/blank.gifit ourselves to God's work and glory: "to bring to pass the immortality and eternal life of man." - Moses 1:39

Primary resources on temples:

The purpose of temples and see temples around the world.
More questions? See the FAQ page.

The power of Women

I received an e-mail recently that had an article on the correlation between the safety/security of women and the relative peacefulness of the nations in which they live.

I quote from the BYU news release:

The researchers spent seven years building a new database that covers 260 factors regarding the treatment of women in 174 countries. Then they used that data to show a statistically significant relationship between the security of women and peacefulness of nations.

This research is available at http://womanstats.org and boasts that is has "the most comprehensive compilation of information on the status of women in the world."

Valerie Hudson is the project's lead.

I further quote from the article:

"We suggest that the root of what we call national security may actually lie in a very unusual or unexpected place, and that is the treatment of women in society," says lead author Valerie Hudson, BYU professor of political science. "We offer what we consider to be fairly strong preliminary empirical evidence based on our new database that this is a viable alternative hypothesis."

The researchers compared their findings regarding the treatment of women with commonly held explanations for peacefulness: levels of democracy, levels of wealth and identity of the civilization. The association with peace was strongest with the treatment of women.

"If you used all four variables to try to predict state peacefulness, the one that would give you the best predictions of the four would be violence against women," Hudson found.

Hudson and her co-authors acknowledge that the relationship they observed can operate in the other direction, that is, state insecurity and violence can exaggerate the insecurity of women. And they say much further research is necessary before their results can be considered authoritative.

Of course this is stating the obvious, but think about it- the nation who values and seeks the security of womanhood is the most peaceful... why would it not be so? Seek the security of women, and the family, and the security of the nation will follow.

So, when we're told to be especially nice to girls, we'd better listen...


But what about the men? What effect do they have on a nation? How about this article, entitled "Bare Branches" compiled by the same team, that is forecasting major problems for China, a nation with a culture that values male children over female. They will apparently be faced with 30 million surplus men in about 10 years...

Chinese leader Hu Jintao, reviews the troops... this will be quite a task in about 10 years...

Get out of the car!

This one is self-explanatory...


How many times have you approached the wrong car in the parking lot, thinking it was yours?