Book of Mormon wordprint studies have been used by both critics and Apologists to provide valuable insights into the text of the BOM. The purpose of this post is to reintroduce my wordprint study, to review various important wordprint studies of the Book of Mormon of the past, and to evaluate where we stand in […]

Here are my charts for the LDS Membership Statistics Report, updated with the numbers reported April 4, 2020. These statistics are for calendar year 2019. See last year’s statistical report here. In all, the numbers are very strong, reversing the declining trend of the last several years.   Total membership: 16,565,036, raw growth of 1.54% on prior […]

The following is NOT an official LDS Church announcement. <start of hypothetical announcement> Brothers and sisters. It’s a strange feeling to speak in this empty Conference Center today while feeling the love and warmth of millions of you watching and listening over television, satellite, internet, and radio broadcasts. I pray that we feel connected with […]

  The LDS Church published changes in its handbook and made this available to general membership for the first time. Previously, the handbook was private and only available to general and local leaders. I haven’t had much time to read up on these changes, but while I was at the gym this afternoon, I noticed […]

  For over 100 years, Bible scholars have analyzed the Bible text and historical sources to understand more about things like: when it was written, by whom, actual historical events or extant literary sources that influenced the text, etc. For religions that are open to progress/revelation, the information learned by scholars in this process has […]

  You’ve probably seen the recent story about the LDS Church saving surplus tithing funds and growing a large ‘rainy day fund’, estimated at $100B.  The math goes like this. Let’s assume the Church takes in $1B per year surplus in tithing. For example, let’s say the Church brings in $7B in tithing and expenses […]

    This is a continuation of a prior post where I shared quotes from Terryl Givens very interesting presentation at Benchmark Books.  Indented quotes will be from Brother Givens unless otherwise stated. I’m not the first to say this, but all religion begins as mystical experience and it all begins in proximity to the volcano, […]

  My focus this winter has been on the #2 ranked Springville basketball team and will be through February. Go Red Devils! My posting frequency has gone down, but I continue to be excited about sharing the churchistrue LDS paradigm and will try to keep my blog posts going and stay up on the current […]

  I’m enjoying Don Bradley’s new book Lost 116 Pages. I’m just getting to the good part where Don describes what’s on the lost pages. I wanted to highlight an excerpt from the book and a bit of explanation from his podcast interview with Bryce Blankenagel from Bryce’s podcast Naked Mormonism. from the book: Joseph’s […]

  This blog post is a follow up from a previous blog post review of the book Bridges, by David Ostler. This post considers some of the criticisms of the book or pushback on some of the ideas from the book that I’ve seen from the conservative LDS perspective. That conservative LDS perspective I’m speaking […]