The Fighting Preacher - Willard Bean

If you haven't seen the movie The Fighting Preacher, you need to go ASAP. It's an outstanding depiction of a little-known aspect of LDS Church history.

97% on Rotten Tomatoes!

https://www.rottentomatoes.com/m/the_fighting_preacher

This is the story of Willard Bean, who was called on a mission to Palmyra in the early 1900s.

The boxing ring he set up was in the building across Main Street from today's Oliver Cowdery Memorial, too.

The photo in this article shows the boxing ring:

https://www.deseretnews.com/article/900064140/new-film-the-fighting-preacher-is-the-best-church-history-story-youve-never-head-of-director-says.html

The movie is doing some good business, but not as good as it deserves. Go see it. And take someone.

https://www.boxofficemojo.com/movies/?page=daily&id=thefightingpreacher.htm

Topics we can't talk about

https://www.lbcoaching.co.za/surfacing-the-elephant-in-the-room/

There is an obvious reality when it comes to problems: if you can't talk about them, you can't fix them.

This is the elephant-in-the-room problem.

It is classic organizational behavior to ignore problems and pretend they don't exist. Management often considers it disloyal to discuss certain problems. Here is a good example from an article in Forbes that I link to at the end of this post.

After completing a culture assessment for a major corporation I was doing my “What? So what? and Now what?” presentation to the senior management team. That’s where I describe the results, point out the implications of the findings, and make recommendations for change. One of the findings was that the CEO had a shoot-the-messenger reputation that was stifling open dialogue on key operational issues.

In sharing some of the open-ended comments from the survey, I put up a slide with a direct quote from one of the anonymous respondents: “I would love to share my ideas with [the CEO], but it’s not safe to speak your mind around here. All he seems to want is a bunch of yes-men.”

Within a nanosecond of reading that comment the CEO slammed his fist on the table and shouted “That’s ridiculous! Find out who said that and usher him out the door! We don’t have room in this organization for people who are too weak-kneed to speak up.” All the other executives sort of cowered in silence at this display of fury. Then I simply said: “I. Rest. My. Case.” After a long pause the CEO smiled, then chuckled, then broke into a hearty laugh.

The elephant in the room (the CEO’s bullying style) had been identified, and now the CEO and his team (and later others) were ready to discuss the undiscussable. They were finally on their way to taming the elephant. And taming that elephant led to identifying and taming others.

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We see the elephant-in-the-room in the Church as well.

I, along with many other members of the Church of Jesus Christ of Latter-day Saints, notice that there are elephants in the room that no one can talk about.

It's unfortunate because many of these elephants exist because of past mistakes, and these mistakes can be resolved fairly easily be refocusing on the teachings of the prophets instead of the teachings of modern intellectuals.

For example, there is a lot of confusion about Church history and Book of Mormon historicity that people don't feel free to discuss. The recent Gospel Topics Essay on Book of Mormon geography  expressly prohibits discussing the topic in Church settings.

Treating these issues as elephants in the room doesn't prevent people from thinking about them. It just moves the conversation to other forums, notably the Internet. Web pages such as Mormon Stories and CES Letter thrive by focusing on these elephants in the room.

As long-time readers know, I've addressed some of these topics in my blogs and books. There is more to come.

In the meantime, there is an excellent discussion of the elephant-in-the-room problem here:

https://www.forbes.com/sites/rodgerdeanduncan/2014/10/14/is-there-an-elephant-in-the-room-name-it-and-tame-it/#6d99856734dd

Cumorah was in New York in 1923

In 1923, Church leaders recognized that the Hill Cumorah in western New York was the Hill Cumorah of Mormon 6:6. It was the scene of the final battles of the Jaredites and Nephites, just as President Oliver Cowdery described it in Letter VII.

BYU Studies has an excellent article on the commemoration that year of the 100th anniversary of Moroni's first visit to Joseph Smith. I posted comments about it on my new blog, where I am accumulating everything relevant to Cumorah.

www.thehillcumorah.com

The question to consider: What will the 200th anniversary be like?

Unless there is a course-correction to the current trend, in 2023 any celebration at the "hill in New York" will involve only the set of plates Joseph obtained from Moroni's stone box on the hill. There will be no mention of Jaredites or Nephites having lived in that area.

Flooding along the Mississippi

Nice interactive NASA image that compares normal with flood-stage rivers in the Midwest.

https://earthobservatory.nasa.gov/images/145029/flooding-continues-along-the-mississippi

Those of us who think the Book of Mormon events took place in this area think the cities sunk in 3 Nephi were destroyed and buried underneath these rivers. When we look at the map, we can see how and why that would happen.

2019 Cumorah pageant part 2

I've uploaded another video about the Hill Cumorah Pageant.

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=DQm_RFcPXtI

Turtle Island (North America)

In this video, we visit the Skanonh Great Law of Peace Center in Liverpool, NY (outside of Syracuse).

http://www.skanonhcenter.org/

The guide discusses the creation story, including the formation of Turtle Island which is North America. We can compare this to 2 Ne. 10:20: we have been led to a better land, for the Lord has made the sea our path, and we are upon an isle of the sea.

Some people are confused by that, concluding that Lehi's promised land must be an island. There are several ways to interpret/understand this passage, but the Native American concept of Turtle Island fits pretty well.

Port Byron

Next we pass through Port Byron, where Brigham Young lived for a while. The town has a historical marker to that effect.

The house where some believe he lived is still standing, as we see in the video.

Peter Whitmer cabin

After that, we visit the Peter Whitmer farm where Joseph and Oliver translated the plates of Nephi that Joseph received from the messenger who brought them from the Hill Cumorah.

Finally, we end up at the first night of pageant (dress rehearsal). There were some great protesters outside. You can see them on the video. There were around 5,000 people, which is a big crowd for the rehearsal. Unfortunately, it rained pretty hard, but I didn't get that in the video.

Enjoy!

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The reconstructed cabin in the video was long thought to be built on the original foundation of the Whitmer home. This was always a little problematic because the cabin had only two small bedrooms upstairs, one of which Joseph and Oliver used to translate the plates of Nephi.

In the last year or so, Church archaeologists have found evidence of more buildings on the property. It now appears that the Whitmer home was a double cabin, twice as large as the one that was rebuilt that we walk to in the video. It's not yet clear which building(s) were the Whitmer home, but the current cabin always seemed a little small for all the events that took place there, including the organization of the Church in 1830.

This is also the home in which David Whitmer described people sitting around the table when Joseph demonstrated how he translated the plates by putting a stone in a hat and reading off words. That's much different than the actual translation, of course, for which Joseph used the Urim and Thummim and the actual plates.

Mary Whitmer and the plates
The messenger was
"Brother Nephi,"
not Moroni.

BTW, the missionaries are telling everyone the phony story of Moroni showing Mary Whitmer the plates. Mary did see the plates, but it wasn't Moroni who showed them to her. The M2C intellectuals want you to think it was Moroni because they don't want people to know about the Hill Cumorah in New York.

According to Mary, it was "Brother Nephi," one of the 3 Nephites, who showed her the plates. David said it was the same person who took the Harmony plates to Cumorah.

The phony story about Moroni was invented by Mary's grandson, but Church historians and M2C intellectuals liked it better so they incorporated it into the Saints and now we have everyone in the Church learning false history, all because the M2C intellectuals don't want people to even know about the New York Cumorah.

Sad.

I've explained all of this here

https://saintsreview.blogspot.com/2018/09/the-mary-whitmer-problem.html

here

http://www.bookofmormoncentralamerica.com/2018/09/the-inside-mole-working-on-saints.html

and here

http://www.bookofmormoncentralamerica.com/2017/12/opening-heavens-but-censoring-history.html.

Have a great day! 

new video-Cumorah pageant 2019

The latest video shows some of the set up for the 2019 Cumorah pageant and a visit to the awesome Latter-Day Harvest Bookstore in Palmyra.

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=GNOHhe58ufs

Subscribers to the Moroni's America channel get automatic notifications of new videos.

The fundamentals - Church history

So often, organizations and people lose focus when they forget the fundamentals.

Those who have questions about Church history should remember this advice from twitter:

When in doubt, go back to the fundamentals. When you're sure, build on the fundamentals. When not making progress, go back to the fundamentals. When you are making progress, build on the fundamentals. The fundamentals never go away. If anything, they become more pronounced.
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Fundamentals in Church history:

1. Joseph Smith obtained metal plates from a stone box on the Hill Cumorah in western New York.

2. Using the Urim and Thummim that were in the stone box, he translated the engravings on the plates into English while in Harmony, PA.

3. He returned the Harmony plates to a divine messenger who took them back to the Hill Cumorah.

4. In Fayette, NY, Joseph translated the plates of Nephi.

5. The Hill Cumorah of Mormon 6:6 is the same hill in New York from which Joseph got the plates.

Very simple.
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Here's an example from football.

“This is a football.”

In his best-selling book, When Pride Still Mattered: A Life Of Vince Lombardi, author David Maraniss explains what happened when Lombardi walked into training camp in the summer of 1961.

He took nothing for granted. He began a tradition of starting from scratch, assuming that the players were blank slates who carried over no knowledge from the year before… He began with the most elemental statement of all. “Gentlemen,” he said, holding a pigskin in his right hand, “this is a football.”

Lombardi was coaching a group of three dozen professional athletes who, just months prior, had come within minutes of winning the biggest prize their sport could offer. And yet, he started from the very beginning.

https://jamesclear.com/vince-lombardi-fundamentals