As of late...

Recently, my wife decided that we should read the Book of Mormon by the end of the year. I am glad that she did. Honestly it's been a while since I have regularly read the Book of Mormon (or any scriptures for that matter.) I keep going over in my mind the experiences that occur in the book and how intricate it is. It's no wonder what we have is mainly spiritual in nature. There would be an enormous amount of history to tell! What is most important is the spiritual nature of the book anyway.

I have also been reading some material online regarding the church. Recently I have been reading Jeff Lindsay’s blog http://mormanity.blogspot.com/ I am amazed at Jeff’s humanity and his intelligent posts. I have been reading from his website for while http://www.jefflindsay.com/. There is a lot of good information on there, not just Mormon apologetics.

I was amazed to find posting on Jeff’s blog none other than one Daniel C. Peterson. Daniel came to my mission in Arcadia California sometime in 96 I think. I remember that he gave a really interesting talk. After his talk, he opened up to allow for doctrinal questions. I at the time was not much into doctrine other than a few things. There were a couple of missionaries in my Zone that were having these "deep doctrine" discussions, which they wouldn't let me in on due to the fact that I was a greenie.

One particular missionary, I can't think of his name, had come up with this theory that the statement "Every knee shall bow and every tongue shall confess" found in Romans and Mosiah (or perhaps elsewhere) was referring to an actual ordinance. He had all these scriptures to back up his claims. I remember Daniel basically shot the idea down without much of a thought. I found the whole thing amusing really. I gained a lot of respect for Daniel that day.

Anyway, as I read more and more online from the critics of the Church, I keep thinking about people who are doing their best to discredit the church. They spend hours and hours studying church history, doctrines and anything they can get their hands on. I met a guy one time on my mission that had read the entire standard works and had a whole library of both anti books and books written by General Authorities. He spent so much time trying to debunk what we believe that I think that he may have forgotten to do any studying of his own church.

People should really spend more time reading the Bible and less time trying to discredit other people. You can find fault in anything if you look for it. You can also find good things in anything if you look for it.
At the end of the day, we can do as much study as we would like but it will amount to nil unless we go to the ultimate source for truth, God. He can teach us all truth.