Engaging Gospel Doctrine (Episode 177)

Lesson 04

“The Things Which I Saw While I Was Carried Away in the Spirit”

Hook / God is not American. This may seem obvious when stated so bluntly, but unfortunately this exact idea is too often presupposed.
Manual Goal / To help class members understand Nephi’s vision of the future and how the warnings and promises in it apply to us today.
EGD Goal / To prepare class members to “challenge and be challenged by” some difficult chapters, and to model a healthy approach to these scriptures that appreciates the good while rejecting the harmful.
  1. Sunday School
  2. Framing (easy traps/assumptions to fall into on this one. This is going to be a lesson that is more challenging to import directly into Sunday School, similar to the sacrifice of Isaac one, but these are issues that we desperately need to bring up)
  3. Two Minute Take Home
  4. A tale of two churches
  5. On the removal of stumbling blocks
  6. Scripture commentary
  7. Lesson: (uplifting stuff first)
  8. Stumbling blocks and hardened hearts (and their opposites) Humility. Be open to being wrong. Apologize. Forgive. Change. (share idea of “ritual redo”).
  9. Plan of Salvation and Plan of Damnation
  10. Church of God and Church of the Devil (14:14)
  11. Challenge the scriptures
  12. Portrayals of the Lamanites
  13. Portrayal of Columbus (the “God supports colonialism” line) Whose side is God on? (those being unjustly oppressed, sure)
  14. Portrayal of the “Great and Abominable Church”
  15. Reading in Full
  16. Scripture Study
  17. Authorship of Revelation (only book in the New Testament we can tell was a native Aramaic speaker, does say he is John, strongest evidence against apostolic authorship is Revelation 21:14, “14And the wall of the city has twelve foundations, and on them are the twelve names of the twelve apostles of the Lamb.”, so not even that strong. Probably not John the disciple, but could be).
  18. Did Jesus establish a Church?
  19. The nature of Early Christianity (Eusebius vs. Bauer)
  20. Vaticinium ex Eventu
  21. Study Notes
  22. Does God command or condone genocide? (this is both theologically abhorrent and precisely the kind of thing humans are prone to believe, that God supports their greed)
  23. What was the Great Apostasy?
  24. Dispensationalism down the Rabbit Hole
  25. Literal truth (even then, there is so much good in the “dark ages” and inspiration and revelation
  26. Lamanites and Native American DNA
  27. Corruption of the truth (how Christians, Muslims, Mormons all accuse the other groups of changing their texts so they don’t prove the later groups legitimate)
  28. The nature of scripture (how much human, how much God)

Stephen Robinson’s article on the G&A C

Standing Apart:

Standing Apart Review:

Lds.org essay about DNA

Get a write up on the changes to the Introduction

Quotes about the dark ages not being so dark

Eric Dursteller on this

"The Evolution of Mormon Views on the Middle Ages and the Renaissance"

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