Letters to a Mormon Elder


Book Description

Originally published in 1990, this volume is designed as 17 letters the author sends to a fictitious Mormon Elder on such topics as the truth and errors in Gods Word, the doctrine of God, if there is one God or many, and further tests of Joseph Smith. (Christian)




CES Letter


Book Description

CES Letter is one Latter-Day Saint's honest quest to get official answers from the LDS Church (Mormon) on its troubling origins, history, and practices. Jeremy Runnells was offered an opportunity to discuss his own doubts with a director of the Church Educational System (CES) and was assured that his doubts could be resolved. After reading Jeremy's letter, the director promised him a response.No response ever came.




Godforsaken Idaho


Book Description

Nine stories illuminate what it means to be Mormon and how faith serves to humanize, in a work that includes a seriocomic portrait of a young Joseph Smith.




The Wentworth Letter


Book Description

Why buy our paperbacks? Standard Font size of 10 for all books High Quality Paper Fulfilled by Amazon Expedited shipping 30 Days Money Back Guarantee BEWARE of Low-quality sellers Don't buy cheap paperbacks just to save a few dollars. Most of them use low-quality papers & binding. Their pages fall off easily. Some of them even use very small font size of 6 or less to increase their profit margin. It makes their books completely unreadable. How is this book unique? Unabridged (100% Original content) Font adjustments & biography included Illustrated About The Wentworth Letter by Joseph Smith The "Wentworth letter" was a letter written in 1842 by Latter Day Saint movement founder Joseph Smith to "Long" John Wentworth, editor and proprietor of the Chicago Democrat. It outlined the history of the Latter Day Saint movement up to that time, and included Mormonism's Articles of Faith. The letter was written in response to Wentworth's inquiry on behalf of one of his friends, George Barstow, who was writing a history of New Hampshire. The letter was first published on March 1, 1842 in the Times and Seasons in Nauvoo, Illinois.




The Late War Between the United States and Great Britain


Book Description

This is a famous educational text by Gilbert J. Hunt presenting an account of the War of 1812 in the style of the King James Bible. It starts with President James Madison and the congressional declaration of war and then describes the Burning of Washington, the Battle of New Orleans, and the Treaty of Ghent.




How Wide the Divide?


Book Description

Voted one of Christianity Today's 1998 Books of the Year! Mormons and evangelicals don't often get along very well, at least not once they begin to discuss their religious beliefs. They often set about trying to convert one another, considering the faith the other holds as defective in some critical way. Unfortunately, much of what they say about one another simply isn't true. False stereotypes abound on both sides, preventing genuine and helpful communication. Having discovered this sad state of affairs, Craig Blomberg, a committed evangelical scholar, and Stephen Robinson, a committed Mormon scholar, set out to listen to one another and to ferret out the real agreements and disagreements between them. In the conversation that develops, you will read what each believes about key theological issues--the nature and bounds of Scripture, the nature of God and deification, the person of Christ and the Trinity, and the essentials of salvation--and see how they interact with one another. What they agree on may surprise you. Though this book does not sweep differences under the rug, it is meant to help Mormons and evangelicals know and tell the truth about one another. It does not expect to end evangelistic efforts from either side. In fact, it may help to promote more effective communication because it can help to get rid of misrepresentations from both sides. In the end, however, you will be able to judge for yourself just how wide the divide between them is.




View of the Hebrews


Book Description

In the nineteenth century, it was a common belief that Native Americans were the descendants of the Ten Lost Tribes of Israel. Ethan Smith wrote on this topic, and in so doing, challenged the dismissal of the Indigenous Americans by European settlers. Smith used biblical scripture, similarities in the Hebrew and Native American languages and their name for God, and other points of evidence to prove the connection between Israel and the First Nations. From there he showed how the reunited Hebrew tribes would be restored to Zion before the end of the world. Perhaps the most fascinating aspect of Smith's book is that it is said to have influenced the Book of Mormon, which was published about seven years after later. As a child, Smith moved away from religion after his parents died but found his way back before he turned 20 and worked in the ministry until his death. Smith wrote several books while serving in the ministry in which he explored prophecies and baptism, among other subjects. But this book remains one of the most controversial of all his publications.




Moroni and the Swastika


Book Description

While Adolf Hitler’s National Socialist government was persecuting Jews and Jehovah’s Witnesses and driving forty-two small German religious sects underground, the Church of Jesus Christ of Latter-day Saints continued to practice unhindered. How some fourteen thousand Mormons not only survived but thrived in Nazi Germany is a story little known, rarely told, and occasionally rewritten within the confines of the Church’s history—for good reason, as we see in David Conley Nelson’s Moroni and the Swastika. A page-turning historical narrative, this book is the first full account of how Mormons avoided Nazi persecution through skilled collaboration with Hitler’s regime, and then eschewed postwar shame by constructing an alternative history of wartime suffering and resistance. The Twelfth Article of Faith and parts of the 134th Section of the Doctrine and Covenants function as Mormonism’s equivalent of the biblical admonition to “render unto Caesar,” a charge to cooperate with civil government, no matter how onerous doing so may be. Resurrecting this often-violated doctrinal edict, ecclesiastical leaders at the time developed a strategy that protected Mormons within Nazi Germany. Furthermore, as Nelson shows, many Mormon officials strove to fit into the Third Reich by exploiting commonalities with the Nazi state. German Mormons emphasized a mutual interest in genealogy and a passion for sports. They sent husbands into the Wehrmacht and sons into the Hitler Youth, and they prayed for a German victory when the war began. They also purged Jewish references from hymnals, lesson plans, and liturgical practices. One American mission president even wrote an article for the official Nazi Party newspaper, extolling parallels between Utah Mormon and German Nazi society. Nelson documents this collaboration, as well as subsequent efforts to suppress it by fashioning a new collective memory of ordinary German Mormons’ courage and travails during the war. Recovering this inconvenient past, Moroni and the Swastika restores a complex and difficult chapter to the history of Nazi Germany and the Mormon Church in the twentieth century—and offers new insight into the construction of historical truth.




Elders


Book Description

A glorious debut that T.C. Boyle calls "powerful and deeply moving" that follows two young Mormon missionaries in Brazil and their tense, peculiar friendship. Elder McLeod--outspoken, surly, a brash American--is nearing the end of his mission in Brazil. For nearly two years he has spent his days studying the Bible and the Book of Mormon, knocking on doors, teaching missionary lessons--"experimenting on the word." His new partner is Elder Passos, a devout, ambitious Brazilian who found salvation and solace in the church after his mother's early death. The two men are at first suspicious of each other, and their work together is frustrating, fruitless. That changes when a beautiful woman and her husband offer the missionaries a chance to be heard, to put all of their practice to good use, to test the mettle of their faith. But before they can bring the couple to baptism, they must confront their own long-held beliefs and doubts, and the simmering tensions at the heart of their friendship. A novel of unsparing honesty and beauty, Elders announces Ryan McIlvain as a writer of enormous talent.




Bamboozled by the CES Letter


Book Description

In April 2013 Jeremy T. Runnells published a PDF booklet entitled, "Letter to a CES Director." This booklet, which is now typically referred to as the "CES Letter," catalogs Runnells' concerns and reason why he left the Church of Jesus Christ of Latter-day Saints (Mormons). Runnells has worked hard to make his booklet available to people everywhere (and in several languages) and has, unfortunately, been the agent for leading at least a few other believers out of Mormonism. Sadly, most of those who have been bamboozled by the "CES Letter" are Latter-day Saints who were blind-sided by scholarly-sounding interpretations of challenging data. In my opinion, however, the "CES Letter" creates a caricature of Mormonism. The arguments are fundamentally flawed and do not accurately represent either Mormonism or the only logical interpretations of the data. Unfortunately, the reason the "CES Letter" has enjoyed any success is that most Latter-day Saints have never been exposed to some of the more complex matters in early Mormon history. On average, the typical Latter-day Saint has never needed to think outside of the box on Mormon-related philosophical, historical, or scholarly issues. "Bamboozled by the 'CES Letter'" explains why these controversial issues need not kill a testimony. Interpretation matters. Many lay members, as well as educated Mormon scholars, are fully aware of every topic discussed in the "CES Letter" but continue strong in their faith because they recognize that there are logical interpretations which can be integrated with their belief in Mormonism. There are answers to the concerns raised by the "CES Letter," and those answers can be supported by current scholarship as well as harmonized with the acceptance of Mormon truth claims.