The Reasonableness of Christianity Blog

I have been following evangelical Christian Kyle Beshears’ Substack, in which he posts chapters of a book on The Church of Jesus Christ that he is working on. The book is intended for evangelical Christians and takes on a question and answer approach to explain the beliefs and history of The Church. I love the openness, and I love Dr. Beshears’ straightforward and fair approach. The truth-seeking intellectual honesty is refreshing.  The most recent post is on the nature of Christ, an essential and fundamental topic. As usual, Beshears accurately describes LDS beliefs about the nature of Jesus Christ. He does a great job of demonstrating the many aspects of our beliefs that overlap with evangelical Christian beliefs- such as the birth, life, ministry, Atonement, and resurrection of Christ as described and celebrated in both the Bible and Book of Mormon. After describing similarities, the remainder of the chapter reasonably focuses on the primary difference between our beliefs in the

General Conference begins a week from Saturday. It is two full days of messages from Church leaders for members of The Church of Jesus Christ of Latter-day Saints. But they aren't just for Church members. One of my favorite stories about General Conference comes from my wife, which I will share with her permission. One year when she was a young girl, her family went to her grandmother's home on conference day hoping to watch General Conference on a local access channel because they didn’t have a TV in their home. The grandmother, who had been very angry and disappointed when her daughter (my wife’s mother) left the Catholic Church, excitedly showed them the program she had been watching on TV, telling them that this kind of God-fearing gospel learning is what they need, not the Mormon church. My in-laws looked at the TV and said, “Yes, that is General Conference! That is exactly what we want to watch!” Instantly the TV was turned off as the realization struck that this wasn’t

The wheel of history rolls forward. (Courtesy Wikimedia Commons) My last post ended on a note of pessimism for the future of our society. I promised I would follow that up with a more optimistic post. … Ok, so this one isn’t pure optimism, but at least maybe it’s more balanced? I will note up front that my personal bias in favor of The Church of Jesus Christ of Latter-day Saints shows through strongly in this post – reader beware – and the ideas I express here are highly speculative. I used to wonder what was the point of end-times revelations. The prophecies aren’t really specific enough to plan by. We are told that Christ will come “as a thief in the night,” suggesting that the end-times prophecies were never meant as a clear timeline. Revelations tell of wars, plagues, disasters, and descriptions of what sound like at least partial societal collapse, but finally the Lord will return and usher in the Millennial reign of peace and glory. The internet is filled with piles of speculatio