Last updated on May 6th, 2025 at 06:40 pm
April 27, 2025
Here is the best thing I heard (What?), saw (Eye.), and read (Read.) this week, as well as the best idea (💡) I developed.
What?
followHim Podcast – Voices of the Restoration 5 – “Early Converts” – Dr. Gerrit Dirkmaat:
- [Dr. Gerrit Dirkmaat] “If God commands me to do it, I’m going to do it. I hope what some of your listeners get out of the conversion stories of these early converts is we need to have their mentality. In order to survive in the world we have today – with the sinfulness and being bombarded by people
attacking the church and attacking us for our faith and the sinfulness that surrounds us – we need to have a mentality that once we are converted, we follow the prophet and his church. However long it took us to get there, … we are going to be faithful.
“And what if things are really terrible? We’re still going to be faithful. Well, what if things don’t make sense? Well, what if horrible things happen to me in my life or in my family? We’re still going to be faithful. Frankly, I feel like we owe it to some of these early members to not casually throw away our faith, because they suffered so that you could have this.
“So don’t let some anonymous person on X derail your testimony when you have spiritual and possibly even literal forebearers who’ve given up everything because they knew this was true. And they knew Joseph Smith: they knew him, they met him, they talked to him, and they knew he was a prophet. Much more so than whoever is spouting off on the latest subreddit is telling you.”
Eye.
For the first time in our parenting journey, my wife and I watched all three of our children play sports on the same day (Saturday, April 26, 2025). Our 7-year-old son had a baseball game, our 3-year-old daughter had a soccer game, and our 9-year-old son had a flag football game. It is a joy to see the growth and progression of each of our children!
Read.
“Christ and the New Covenant: The Messianic Message of the Book of Mormon” by Jeffrey R. Holland:
- “To consider that everything of saving significance in the Church stands or falls on the truthfulness of the Book of Mormon and, by implication, the Prophet Joseph Smith’s account of how it came forth is as sobering as it is true. It is a ‘sudden death’ proposition. Either the Book of Mormon is what the Prophet Joseph said it is, or this church and its founder are false, a deception from the first instance onward.
“Not everything in life is so black and white, but the authenticity of the Book of Mormon and its keystone role in our religion seem to be exactly that. Either Joseph Smith was the prophet he said he was, a prophet who, after seeing the Father and the Son, later beheld the angel Moroni, repeatedly heard counsel from Moroni’s lips, and eventually received at his hands a set of ancient gold plates that he then translated by the gift and power of God, or else he did not. And if he did not, he would not be entitled to the reputation of New England folk here or well-meaning young man or writer of remarkable fiction. No, nor would he be entitled to be considered a great teacher, a quintessential American religious leader, or the creator of great devotional literature. If he had lied about the coming forth of the Book of Mormon, he would certainly be none of these.
“I am suggesting that one has to take something of a do-or-die stand regarding the restoration of the gospel of Jesus Christ and the divine origins of the Book of Mormon. Reason and righteousness require it. Joseph Smith must be accepted either as a prophet of God or else as a charlatan of the first order, but no one should tolerate any ludicrous, even laughable middle ground about the wonderful contours of a young boy’s imagination or his remarkable facility for turning a literary phrase. That is an unacceptable position to take – morally, literarily, historically, or theologically. …
“Consider the withering examination the Book of Mormon and its admittedly extraordinary claims have withstood. Has anyone presently reading these words ever tried to write anything of spiritual, redeeming, genuinely inspiring substance? With university degrees and libraries and computers and research assistants and decades of time, have you ever tried to write anything that anyone could read without tedium or apathy? And if one could produce even a few such inspiring pages, would that slim volume be anything anyone would want to read more than once, to say nothing of scores of times – marking it and pondering it, cross-referencing and quoting it, taking thousands of public sermons and a heart full of personal solace from it? Would it be good enough for people to weep over, to say it changed their lives, or saved their lives, or became something they were willing to give up fortune and future for – and then did just that?
“What if your literary piece created enemies for you? What if it were left in the public arena, open to the criticism of your most hostile and learned opponents, for more than 150 years? What if it were pulled apart and minutely examined and held up to the light of history, literature, anthropology, and religion with no other purpose than to discredit it and denounce you? Could what you have written be that good? Would you still be willing to say that it was an inspired piece of work, let alone hold to your assertion that it was divinely revealed and that its contents were eternally important – that in a very real sense the whole future of the world was linked to your little volume? By this time would either you or your piece still be standing? Would anyone still be reading it?
“If Joseph Smith did not translate the Book of Mormon as a work of ancient origin, then I would move heaven and earth to meet the ‘real’ nineteenth-century author. After one hundred and fifty years, no one can come up with a credible alternative candidate, but if the book were false, surely there must be someone willing to step forward – if no one else, at least the descendants of the ‘real’ author – claiming credit for such a remarkable document and all that has transpired in its wake. After all, a writer that can move millions can make millions. Shouldn’t someone have come forth then or now to cashier the whole phenomenon? …
“I have read a reasonable number of books in my life, and I hope to read many more. I am not steeped in scholarship, but I can recognize profundity in print, especially when I see it page after page. In a lifetime of reading, the Book of Mormon stands preeminent in my intellectual and spiritual life, the classic of all classics, a reaffirmation of the Holy Bible, a voice from the dust, a witness for Christ, the word of the Lord unto salvation. I testify of that as surely as if I had, with the Three Witnesses, seen the angel Moroni or, with the Three and the Eight Witnesses, seen and handled the plates of gold.
“The Book of Mormon is the sacred expression of Christ’s great last covenant with mankind. It is a new covenant, a new testament from the New World to the entire world. Reading it was the beginning of my light. It was the source of my first spiritual certainty that God lives, that he is my Heavenly Father, and that a plan of happiness was outlined in eternity for me. It led me to love the Holy Bible and the rest of the Standard Works of the church. It taught me to love the Lord Jesus Christ, to glimpse his merciful compassion, and to consider the grace and grandeur of his atoning sacrifice for my sins and the sins of all men, women, and children from Adam to the end of time. The light I walk by is his light. His mercy and magnificence lead me in my witness of him to the world.” - See how I used part of this quote in General Conference Applied S5 E5.
💡
My application from President Henry B. Eyring’s April 2025 General Conference address (“‘Draw Near unto Me’“, see General Conference Applied S5 E4) and from President Jeffrey R. Holland’s April 2025 General Conference address (“As a Little Child“, see General Conference Applied S5 E5) are connected.
- From President Eyring’s address, I shared that oftentimes I serve out of duty rather than out of love. Thus, I committed to “serving others for the Savior CHEERFULLY.” From President Holland’s address, I noted that “children love so easily, they forgive so readily, they laugh so delightfully. Thus, I committed to letting “adulting” weigh me down less and laughing more.
- These are connected because, at times, I grumble about how often neighbor children hang out at our house or in our yard with my children. For some reason I think that that is a disservice to me – but it’s not. Rather, I can embrace the chaos, cheerfully serve the parents of those children who are at our house or in our yard by providing a safe and fun space for their children to spend time, and laugh more and become like a child.