LAST POST!

During the summer after our first year of college, some of my friends and I decided to organize a game of kickball—a game we enjoyed back in elementary school. When I told another friend about it excited and told me to let him know when we had a sure time scheduled. When we finally decided on a time I let him know, but he said he couldn't make it. He had a raid scheduled for that time, and his guild needed him. People really let their online relationships take precedence over their offline lives.

Too much of a good thing

Shortly before the Provo Temple was dedicated, President Lee expressed his concern that the accessibility of the temple would cause some BYU students to attend the temple so often that they would neglect their studies. President Hinckley exhorted all of us to seek as much education as we can. Like the attending the temple too often, it is possible to spend too much time in pursuit of knowledge. The Web gives us virtually unlimited access to knowledge on a plethora of subjects. If we let our pursuit of knowledge via the internet interfere with our relationships and responsibilities in our families, then even the virtuous cause of learning can be taken too far.

Bugs in the Bazaar

In his paper The Cathedral and the Bazaar, Eric Raymond makes the astute observation that, with enough eyes looking at program source code, all bugs become shallow problems. From personal experience, I completely agree with this assertion. Anyone who has worked on a group programming project has probably had this experience: after pulling out your hair for hours trying to debug, one of your coworkers comes along and—after less than a minute—points out the source of the error. Sometimes the original coder is too familiar with his “perfect” design to see the bug, but many times the biggest factor in why one person finds the problem obvious when another doesn’t is just their different thought processes. This is the strength of the bazaar in debugging: hundreds of developers, each with their unique way of thinking, rooting out your bugs for you.

Why Facebook?

I remember back when MySpace was the big thing. I might have had a bad impression from the horrid color schemes and terrible layouts that everyone I knew used on their pages, but MySpace always repulsed me. Again, I am probably biased because of my personal social tendencies, but I never felt the need to publish the happenings of my life on MySpace for everyone in the world to read. However, when Facebook first emerged I saw a completely different system.
During my senior year of high school, I was coming to the realization that all of my classmates—many of whom I'd known since elementary school—were heading off to universities all over the country, and I might never see them again. That's when a friend introduced me to Facebook. It was just what I needed: an online address book that your friends maintain on their own as their contact information changes.
As MySpace has slowly faded from existence, Facebook has continued to grow in popularity, expanding from its original college audience to include anyone from elementary school children to the elderly in nursing homes. Facebook is now worth billions, whereas MySpace is worth less than the current owner bought it for. I believe Facebook's success is due to its key purpose: keeping you in contact with your friends, both past and present.
Although Facebook has added many new (and some annoying) features over the years, it has managed to keep its original usefulness without becoming too combersome. A decade ago, a high school or mission reunion was very difficult to organize. Contacting hundreds of old friends across the country was a very time-consuming and expensive ordeal if done by phone or mail. Now, with the advent of Facebook, you simply organize a group like "Kaohsiung Missionaries" or "Southridge Class of 2005." You invite a few people you know to join the group, and they forward invitations on to a few more people—like a phone tree, but more organized since Facebook tracks which people have already been contacted. Once the group is formed, members can broadcast messages to the group, announcing the activity. After the original work of creating the group, any mass-message to the group takes no time at all!
Facebook continues as a major networking tool today. With it, I can track my classmates from high school and college, friends from my mission on the other side of the world, and family spread across the nation. Unless the people at Facebook do something very stupid to destroy the usefulness of this tool, I doubt it will become any less popular in the coming years. It has given us a way to keep in touch with our friends and family, wherever they go, so long as they maintain their profiles. It fills a need—a need that I personally experienced—and it fills it well.

Software that kills

Could Google cause a war?

A few weeks ago Nicaraguan troops set up camp on the Costa Rican side of the San Juan River. The Nicaraguan general in charge of those troops has justified his actions by appealing to Google Maps, where the border is misrepresented. Google has admitted that the border is inaccurate and is working to update the maps, but what if Google did something like this on purpose? With the amount of information that Google controls, it isn't beyond belief that someone within their organization could intentionally start a war. After all, Google can manipulate maps, news, emails, and search results. Governments should never rely on information provided solely by Google or any other corporation. If inaccuracies in Google's data—intentional or not—led to international conflict, it would still be the fault of the governments for not verifying their information rather than the fault of Google for misrepresenting it.

The New Game Medium

While the music industry struggles with copyright enforcement, the computer game industry has found an effective solution to the piracy problem. Publishers provide online content and communities that users need official accounts to access. By forcing users to associate their license keys with their accounts the publishers discourage piracy, while also providing some benefits for the users. Since a license is associated with an account, gamers can log in from any computer and play. Since game publishers only allow one session per user, users are discouraged from sharing their accounts with friends. If your game CD breaks, you can simply download a new copy from the publisher because they still have your license on record. Several publishers have started selling licenses online systems and allowing direct download, eliminating the need for any physical media. The music industry needs to create a system that is beneficial to the users—not just the publishers—if they want to succeed in their anti-piracy campaign.

Computer Crimes Across Borders

Today, at the request of Dutch authorities, Armenian police arrested the suspected creator of the Bredolab botnet. The botnet consists of over 200,000 infected computers located around the world. Since the hacker is Armenian, should he be tried in an Armenian court, or extradited to Holland or some other country with affected computer owners? I don't think there's a clear answer to that question, and I think that's a big problem. The World Wide Web has eliminated all borders in the digital world, antiquating our current legal systems with boundaries and jurisdictions. Until we establish a world-wide network law, and an agency with authority to enforce it, uncooperative legal systems will continue to hinder finding and prosecuting internet criminals.

Genealogy Online

The internet streamlines every aspect of family history work, from research to ordinances. Having an online database of genealogical data eliminates countless hours of tedious work that, if required, would cripple the ability of members world-wide to perform proxy ordinances. If every name submitted to the temple was sent to Salt Lake, then checked by hand against Church records for duplicates, temple work would crawl. Instead, we can enter new information into the Church's database from anywhere in the world, the data is checked automatically for any possible errors or conflicts, and then we can print of an ordinance sheet that we can take to the temple. What a miracle, and what a blessing!

Networks: fragile to ubiquitous. Users: stupid as ever.

In The Cuckoo's Egg, Cliff Stoll describes the Arpanet as a collection of fragile relationships built on trust. As the Arpanet has long since been superseded by the Internet, the fragile trust that networks were once built upon has been superseded by the need for information. No modern university could justify lacking internet access on grounds that a hacker might infiltrate their systems, and most homes and businesses find that the benefits of the internet well outweigh any risk of intrusion. However, the digital community has had a cultural revolution since Cliff tracked the KGB informant crawling his network. In the days of Cliff's hacker major security holes went unpatched for years, but now operating system and user software vendors distribute patches via the internet within days or even hours of discovering a vulnerability. Most vendors even bundle tools that automatically find, download and install updates for their products to simplify the process for users.
Although the issues of networks and trust have evolved since the days of The Cuckoo's Egg, issues of poor administration and careless users have not. Software, no matter how secure, can't protect a user who's stupid enough to download and execute an email attachment from a stranger. Security measures in an operating system are worthless if the systems manager does not understand how to use them. People still pick common words as their passwords despite decades of knowledge of the dictionary attack. Others use a pet's name, their birthdates, or other information available to anyone who reads their Facebook profiles. Software has yet to completely protect against user stupidity, and I doubt it ever will. Additional security measures will never make up for users' ignorance, so when will internet safety make its way into the education system? When elementary school children are trained to recognize suspicious emails, websites and files, those children will become the first generation of responsible computer users.

Women in Computer Science

Although many people believe that the relatively small number of women in Computer Science poses a big problem, I disagree. I believe the real problem is the large number of men in our discipline who make no contribution. Of the aspiring CS majors that I know, many—if not most—believe that CS means programming. That is not true. Computer Science is the theory of computing and the study of solving problems programatically. Based on that definition, most CS majors hate Computer Science; they just enjoy programming. If those men all moved to a more suitable major then we would not have many computer scientists at all, male or female.

The Church, Technology... no Unicode?

The Church has struggled with internationalization of its software since we started using computers. A 1984 Ensign article reports how technology was accelerating work for many departments of the church (especially for temple ordinances), but notes that the technology was not yet adapted for temples in the Orient. We still have this problem today. The Church has been very slow to adopt the Unicode standard, which is now almost two decades old. The Mission Office System still uses European character encoding, making MOS nearly unusable for missions in Asia. Even the new FamilySearch has only recently added support for Chinese names, as per the Church's own temple submission standards. Late may be better than never, but as for supporting Church software outside the Americas and Europe, the Church needs to step its efforts.

Vulgarization of the Nerds

In contrast to Cringely's depiction of Sillicon Valley in Triumph of the Nerds, Daniel Lyons claims that emerging companies in the valley have lost the vision of their precursors. If the bright and brilliant of the rising generation focus on making quick cash—through the likes of FarmVille—society as a whole will suffer the lost potential of stagnant technology. But we can't hold them to blame for a lack of higher ambition. The real problem is their customers, who lack desire to do anything more meaningful than play mindless flash games. People need to stop spending money on these virtual sinkholes so that Silicon Valley can return its attention to the meaningful problems that are waiting to be solved.

Is Amazon Green?

A recent study suggests that online shopping leads to increased carbon emissions. The average online shopper might think that avoiding a drive to the store would be more environmentally friendly, but he overlooks something: shipping burns fuel too. According to the article, a consumer must order at least 25 items at once before the carbon footprint is smaller than that of traditional shopping. I have never ordered more than 10 items at once. Since amazon.com began offering free 2-day shipping to students I rarely order more than one item at a time. This reminds me of an older article, reporting that carbon emissions from a Google search are equivalent to boiling a kettle of water. If we aren’t the ones behind the wheel of the truck, or paying the electric bill, we tend to overlook of the environmental impact of these day-to-day activities. Next time you order a book online, order with a friend. Check your query for typos before you press the search button. Bookmark your class websites rather than Googling them daily. It’s scary how wasteful we can be, but amazing how much improvement just a little change can bring.

A Cost for Technology

Today I read Neil Postman’s talk entitled Five Things We Need to Know About Technological Change. Postman’s first assertion in the talk was that the gift of technology invariably comes with a price. Aside from the obvious prevalence of filth available on the web, I have never given much thought to the concept of technology’s negative influences on society—which I suppose is exactly what Postman wanted us to realize. One such repercussion technology has had on mankind is increased impatience. When we obtain some new technology, giving us the ability to quickly accomplish previously time-consuming tasks, we become irritated at the slightest delays or setbacks. This is true even if we finish the task very quickly by the previous standard. For example, how often do we get frustrated when we miss a green light, while driving, and have to wait an additional 30 seconds? Just a few days ago I found myself very annoyed that a sleep routine, which I was using in a program, didn’t provide a resolution higher than 1 second. This meant that I would have to wait a whole second if I used that routine. I think we might be able to use that example as the definition of impatience. I do not, however, believe that these negative consequences outweigh the benefits that new technology brings; we simply need to recognize the problems so that we can better address them.

Technorati (which the syllabus requires us to use) made me do this...

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Another Semester!

It's the start of a new semester! I was under the impression that I wouldn't be using this blog again for school, seeing as how Dr. Holzapfel was called as a mission president and thus precluded the possibility of taking any of his classes again. (I'll have graduated by the time he gets back.) However, to my great surprise one of my Computer Science classes has a blogging requirement this semester! The course is CS404: Ethics and Computers in Society. I found it amusing that the professor compared the course to a religion class during one of our first lectures, which means that it should fit in quite well here! It will be interesting to see how this turns out...

Peter, Paul & Rome

In 2nd Timothy, considered by most to be the last epistle that Paul wrote which made it into the Bible, he asks Timothy to bring Mark with him to Rome. First, this is interesting because Paul and Barnabas had a big disagreement about Mark earlier in Acts, and they split up and went their separate ways because of it. Apparently Paul and Mark were reconciled at some point or another, although the text never mentions anything about Barnabas after that.
Paul was a Roman citizen, so if he were being executed in Rome he would be given time to put his things in order first. Mark could have come to Rome to act as Paul's secretary. This is interesting because Mark later acts as Peter's secretary in Rome, acting as his scribe for the documents written "from Babylon." We also assume that the Gospel of Mark is in fact Peter's memoirs as recorded by Mark, so perhaps it was because of Paul's request that Mark was in Rome and eventually recorded the Gospel of Mark!

Crandall Printing Museum

This past week I visited the Crandall Printing Museum on Center Street in Provo, Utah as part of my Honors Doctrine and Covenants class. I visited the museum once about four years ago (my freshman year in my Honors Book of Mormon class). It hasn’t changed a whole lot since then, but it was definitely a worthwhile experience. Once again, the type-writing letter-casting machine thing was broken. What are the chances of that happening both times I go? He made a reference to his favorite show, The Three Amigos again, but this time he didn’t have the Chinese wooden block prints of the character 林 which he was holding upside down…

This time visiting, I have a much deeper impression about how amazing Gutenberg was, and how many things he had to do to create the printing press. It also amazes me that they were using almost the exact same technology in Joseph Smith’s day for printing as Gutenberg used several hundred years before. That truly amazes me. Gutenberg was a true renaissance man. It was an interesting point that the first printed Bible and the first Book of Mormon were printed in almost an identical manner.

We spent a lot of time talking about Benjamin Franklin this time. I definitely learned some interesting facts about the history of printing in America. I really enjoyed Benjamin Franklin’s epitaph: “The body of Benjamin Franklin, Printer (like the cover of an old book, its contents torn out and stripped of its lettering and gilding), lies here, food for worms; but the work shall not be lost, for it will (as he believed) appear once more in a new and more elegant edition, revised and corrected by the Author.”

One thing that was definitely not there last time I visited (but that we curiously didn’t even talk about) was the replica Gold Plates. They are made of a gold-silver alloy called electrum, and it was created based off Joseph Smiths and Oliver Cowdery’s accounts of the plates. The top plate even had etching of the Reformed Egyptian characters based off the rubbing that Joseph made of the plates. In most artists renditions of the plates, the sealed portion has a metal band of some sort around it. Oliver Cowdery described it as looking like wood or something, so the replica plates actually use tree sap and beeswax as the seal, if I remember correctly. That was pretty neat!

One thing that was really neat, and pertinent to our class, was when he talked about the printing of the Book of Mormon. He had a famous binder come through several years back, and he asked him about how long it would take to bind 5000 copies of the Book of Mormon. The man said, “You mean 500, right?” He said no one printed 5000 of anything back in those days. But, that’s why Martin Harris had to mortgage his farm to have them printed! It’s also a miracle that the Smith family had moved right up to New York near the Eerie Canal, and that a printer had come right to their small township allowing the Book of Mormon to be printed there.

Overall, it was a very worthwhile experience. They are trying to raise funds to expand their museum right now, so if you have lots of money, you should donate some to them! (Note: This is actually my experience from last year because I didn't attend this year.)

Paul's final journy to Jerusalem

One of the most tragic events in the Book of Acts must be Paul's final journy to Jerusalem. It had been foretold by many that ill awaited him there, but he chose to go regardless. We have learned in our class this semester that Luke's purpose in writing Acts was to show how the Gospel made it to Rome and was preached there by Paul. In spite of warnings of his friends (some went so far as to beg him not to go) Paul decided to continue on his mission to Jerusalem to deliver the funds he had gathered for the poor Saints there. When he got there, the zealous Jews who had converted to Christianity conspired against him because they said that he taught against the Law of Moses. These early converts believed that all Christians had to adhere to the Law of Moses because they did not understand that it had been fulfilled by Christ. In the end, Paul was saved by the Roman soldiers from the mob in the temple (they were ready to kill him), and eventually asked for a trial in Rome. Thus Paul's journy to Rome began with his journy to Jerusalem, and so Luke fulfilled his purpose in it.

The Apostasy

"Behold, the days come, saith the Lord God, that I will send a famine in the land, not a famine of bread, nor a thirst for water, but of hearing the words of the Lord" Amos 8:11

All throughout history there has been a pattern between the Lord and man:

• God teaches His gospel to man through His prophets
• The people grow prideful and wicket
• The people reject and kill the prophets
• God does not send prophets among the people for a time
• The people fall into a state of apostasy—living in darkness, not knowing the truth

After the death of Jesus Christ, His Apostles continued to administer the Church and spread the gospel for a time. However, even they knew that another apostasy must soon come. Paul taught, concerning the second coming: "Let no man deceive you by any means: for that day shall not come, except there come a falling away first" (2 Thessalonians 2:3). He also taught: "For I know this, that after my departing shall grievous wolves enter in among you, not sparing the flock. Also of your own selves shall men arise, speaking perverse things, to draw away disciples after them" (Acts 20:29-30).

For some reason many Christians believe that the great falling away, or apostasy, did not occur for several hundred years after the death of Christ. However, Paul's teachings suggest that apostasy would happen much sooner. Many people falsely and unjustly accuse the Catholic church of perverting the pure doctrine of Christ and bringing about the great apostasy. The Apostles had died and the priesthood authority had been taken from the earth long before that time, however, and many of the plain and precious truths had already been lost. The church had already been lost, and although the children of men still had many great truths within the Bible, the fullness of the gospel would need to be restored through another prophet, following the age-old pattern set forth in the scriputres. I know that our loving Heavenly Father has reached out to us again in these latter-days and has again called prophets upon the earth.

BYU Art Museum

This past week we had the opportunity to do a tour at the Museum of Art here at BYU by Rita Wrights. I attended this same tour a year ago, and one of the most interesting paintings, I thought, that we talked about both in class and at the museum is entitled Exchange No. 8.  It is a painting of two chairs, one lying in front of another that's standing upright.  The one lying on the floor is covered by a red veil, which is draped over the top of it.  The upright one is covered by a white veil.  This simple painting of chairs was one of the most symbol-rich works that we saw, in my own opinion.  It didn't have a single person in the painting, but it was clear that it was about the atonement of our Savior.

First, the chairs are both of a simple design, made of wood.  This typifies the Savior for two reasons.  First, simple wooden chairs remind us as his role as a carpenter, the occupation for which he was trained by his adopted father Joseph.  Second, the simple, inelegant design of the chairs echo Isaiah's words: "For he shall grow up before him as a tender plant, and as a root out of a dry ground: he hath no form nor comeliness; and when we shall see him, there is no beauty that we should desire him" (Isaiah 53:2).

Next is the cloth.  The scarlet cloth placed over the fallen chair can represent many things.  The red can represent the mortality of the savior while on earth.  It could represent the scarlet robe placed upon his back by the mocking soldiers, or the blood which he spilt in Gethsemane.  It could represent the ultimate sacrifice of His life on the cross at Golgotha—or it could mean all of these things.  The white cloth reminds us of the linens in which Jesus' body was wrapped for His burial, and which were found neatly folded in the tomb after His resurrection.  It reminds us of purity, and of new life—even life everlasting.  It all points to the atonement.

Finally, there was a light circle around the whole painting.  This suggests that the atonement of Jesus Christ is the center of everything.  All of these symbols point to Jesus Christ—all worked into a painting which, at first glance, may not even appear religious.  This reminds me of an experience I posted about during a previous semester: Bible Culture.

Romans

Dr. H often uses the analogy of using different glasses or lenses to read a text. He says that often when we read a text we are influenced by our modern lenses which we read it through—meaning our culture, previous education, personal experience, and societal expectations. Another major lens is religion. Paul used the scriptures to condemn the Christians as blasphemers before his conversion, but after having his experience with the risen Savior on the road to Damascus, he used the same scriptures to prove that Jesus was the very Christ. Paul was then reading the scriptures with new glasses, or through the Christian lens, and he saw that Jesus was in fact everywhere therein.

I have read the book of Romans before, but not through the same lenses as I do now. Throughout my study of the New Testament this semester I have gained a much greater understanding into the culture, circumstances, and beliefs that persisted at the time that this text was written, and it is a very neat experience reading the text from this new perspective. This is not to say that anything I may have learned when reading the book before was incorrect, but merely that I am now able to gain new and different insights than I gained before.

I heard another great analogy in class that I think applies very well to this situation. Paul quotes the Old Testament in his epistle to Timothy: “For the scripture saith, Thou shalt not muzzle the ox that treadeth out the corn. And, The labourer is worthy of his reward” (1 Timothy 5:18). Paul was quoting a passage from the Old Testament and applying it to his current situation. The original passage was most likely meant to be taken literally (it was talking about actual oxen), but Paul applied it to his fellow laborers in Christ. Since he applied this scripture that was literally talking about oxen to people, does that make his interpretation incorrect? No, of course not! As long as the application is sound and in harmony with the Gospel, why would it be wrong? I would apply that same analogy to my previous readings in Romans. That is to say, I made valid applications to my life and learned good lessons from interpretation, but I do not think that I understood as well what Paul’s literal meaning was when he wrote (or, rather, dictated).

A beautiful example of this is found in Romans chapter 3. Verses 23 through 26 teach us an amazing lesson about the way our loving Heavenly Father works. It starts by saying that we have all sinned. We have all transgressed—offended the law of God, or perhaps we could even say offended God in our actions. In the typical Greco-Roman culture of the time, if you believed that you had offended your god then you would offer a propitiation, or in other words, a peace offering. This was a gift meant to appease the gods and curb their anger. Although the Israelites did not hold this same view, they still offered burnt offerings of thanksgiving unto Jehovah, and the specified sacrifices in the temple for the atonement of their people. However, what we see here in Romans is completely different. We have offended God, we have sinned against Him, but instead of us offering a sacrifice to Him, he sacrificed His beloved Son to atone for our sins. Our Heavenly Father provided the propitiation for our sins—His Son Jesus Christ.

Charity

I remember once, several years ago, a friend of mine made a comment about the translation of the thirteenth chapter of the first epistle of Paul to the Corinthians. This friend of mine commented that the more modern translation of the Bible referred to "faith, hope, and love" in this chapter, whereas the more traditional translations used "faith, hope and charity." This friend of mine thought that "love" was more what Paul was going for, and "charity" must have been a translation error.

Myself, having grown up reading the Latter-day Saint edition of the King James Version of the Bible, I thought it was strange that my friend would say that. I had learned in Primary that "charity is the pure love of Christ" as a young child, and I guess it kind of baffled me that someone else would find that term confusing. I have always felt like charity denoted a higher, purer form of love than that which we normally feel. I think the King James translators did this passage justice in rendering whichever Greek word for "love" that was used here as "charity."

A wise teacher of mine once taught us an interesting principle. If you take every reference to charity in this chapter and replace it with Christ, it still makes sense, since after all "God is love."

However, the same principle does not really apply to us. Can we place our own name in this chapter? Most likely not—at least I can’t. As I was saying before, charity is a Godly attribute that we should all be working towards, but the love that we usually have towards others usually still does not qualify as true charity.

Charity is the pure love of Christ. It is unconditional. Christ loves each and every one of us, regardless of our feelings towards Him or our fellow men. He was willing to lay down His life for every one of us—sinners all. He suffered beyond our comprehension (so great was the pain that blood came from every pore) in order to pay the price of our sins. He is always there, regardless of whether we want Him or not, ready to succor us. That is true charity.

I believe this is why charity is considered the greatest of all. If we truly have charity, then we are in the image of Him who redeemed us, and our Father will be well pleased with us at the last day. If we have not charity, however, then how can we say that we are true followers of Jesus?

Millennium Fever

Paul’s converts in Thessalonica were having Millennium fever. When Jesus ascended, He said that he would come again. The early saints were excited and waiting for that day to happen. Many of them not only expected it to happen within their lifetimes, but to happen shortly. Can you imagine being one of these new converts? They’ve heard the gospel, many of them from those who either personally saw Christ, or at least had heard one of the Twelve teach. They heard of Christ’s power, His miracles, His promised blessings—and that the Kingdom of Heaven was at hand. When the angels said he would come again, why wouldn’t they think it would be in their lifetime? They wanted to be present when He came in power and glory to lift up His followers and destroy the wicked.

However, things do not always work out the way that we want them to. As Paul taught, the Second Coming would not occur until after there had been a falling away. They knew that the world was going to fall into apostasy, even if the early Saints did not understand that. The Church would be destroyed from within (after all, ravenous wolves were going to destroy the flock from within). Ironically, the belief that the Second Coming was nigh actually brought about some of the apostate actions among the early saints in Thessalonica.

The first issue that Paul addresses in his epistle is that some of the people had stopped working. They assumed that the Millennium was soon at hand, so what’s the point in building up temporal things now when it will all be destroyed at Christ’s coming? A second problem was that people had been committing sin. This one is a bit strange to me. If they thought that Christ would soon come, would they not want to be extra righteous and prepare to meet Him face to face? However, that is not what they were thinking, as is obvious from the fact that Paul had to reprimand them. For some reason they had the erroneous idea that Christ would cleans them at His coming. Lastly, some were thinking that those who died before Christ came again were somehow missing out in His glory. Paul corrected this belief by teaching that the righteous dead will be raised at His coming to be with Him.

These things can all be applied to us today. Since the time of Joseph Smith, many of the saints have had the idea that Christ would come again in their lifetimes. Regardless of whether or not this is true, the Lord has commanded us to make good use of our time in probation in this earth. We should not decide that it is fruitless to pursue an education or employment because we will not need it when Christ comes again (this is erroneous anyway, since we are supposed to attain as much knowledge as we can in this life anyway). We should not decide that it’s not important for us to have food storage, or a savings, or insurance, or a retirement fund because we think the Millennium is just around the corner. We should have faith and make preparations for a long, fruitful life, but at the same time live worthily so that we would be prepared if He did come tomorrow.

Special Collections

The last time I attended the special collections seminar thing was about a year ago, so it's a little bit foggy now... However, I think I still remember most of what he talked about, since I've attended it two or three times. The thing that I remember best is the silly video clip that he showed us of the monk help desk for their "new technology"—the book. This is a very interesting (and humorous) reminder of the transition from using scrolls to using books. We can apply this knowledge to the books which Luke authored, namely The Gospel of Luke and the Acts of the Apostles. Since a scroll was only so big, he had to split his works into these two separate parts. This isn't as obvious to us today, seeing as we can fit the entirety of the Old and New Testaments into one (albeit massive) volume, but in antiquity they didn't have the same technology we have today, and that includes books.
Even after books started to come into more widespread use, it was still nothing like we have today. Books were written on pages made of animal skin. It wasn't until much later that the process for manufacturing paper was invented. Books weren't printed either. They had to be painstakingly hand-written. The work of book writing was truly an art. The books they wrote were written in beautiful print, which looked virtually perfect to my eye. We were shown a copy of a page from a Bible that was hand-written by monks, and another that was printed, and I really couldn't tell the difference. The work that went into beautifying the books was amazing too. Even after the printing press came into use, so much effort went into hand decorating the books—it's truly amazing!
Seeing how difficult it was to produce writings in antiquity, it's of small wonder to me now that the Old Testament existed so long as simply an oral tradition before it was actually written down. Even much of Christ's earthly ministry wasn't written down until the Apostles and other eye-witnesses started to die off. It was truly a different world then than it is now. I can type this up and print if off in a couple minutes if I want to, and relatively cheaply too. I can also post it to this blog, and people from all over the entire globe have access to it instantly. It's really amazing how readily information is available to us, and how easy it is to share and spread it.

Paul's letter to the Galations

In class last week we talked about Pauls letter to the Galations. Dr. Holzapfel said that this epistle contains Paul's sharpest rebukes! This is pretty obvious when you look at the language he uses at the beginning of chapter 3: "O foolish Galatians, who hath bewitched you, that ye should not obey the truth, before whose eyes Jesus Christ hath been evidently set forth, crucified among you?"
So why was Paul so angry? The Galatians had accepted the Gospel of Jesus Christ which Paul taught them. However, after Paul left, other Jews came up from Jerusalem and started teaching the people. In essence, they taught that everything Paul said was good and correct, but just not sufficient. They taught that the Galatian converts needed to be circumcized as well as being baptized in Jesus' name. The Galatian saints heeded their teachings, and accepted these practices from the Law of Moses.
When Paul finally got word of this, he was furious. But why? Was it because he thought the Law of Moses was evil? Was he against people accepting these Jewish sentimens? Probably not. Paul himself had been a Pharisee—one of the strictest orders among the Jews—so he had lived the Law of Moses himself very strictly throughout his entire life. Later (assuming Dr. H's view that the Epistle to the Galations was actually written before the Jerusalem conference) Paul would openly censure Peter for being hypocritical in following the Law of Moses around the Jews but not the Gentiles. Was Paul just very opinionated on this point of doctrine, so he lashed out when someone disagreed with him? He probably had reasoning behind this.
Paul taught that salvation was in Jesus, not in the Law. When he saw the Galation saints accepting the teaching that they needed circumcision, and even worse, the bretheren from Jerusalem teaching this doctrine, he was abhorred. What they were teaching when the said what the Galations had done was not sufficient was actually saying that Jesus and his Atonement were not sufficient. They were teaching that baptism and faith in Christ were not sufficient for salvation, but that you needed to follow the Law of Moses. The teaching of that idea would most definitly have caused a fierce reaction from Paul. How can you teach that Jesus is not sufficient for salvation?! So, it doesn't really matter whether or not you're circumcized, or whether or not you eat pork. But if you think that the Gospel of Jesus Christ is insufficient for salvation, then that's the problem.

Acts 2

Acts Chapter 2 contains much of the information that we have on the organization of the early Christian church. There are churches today that call themselves Act 2 churches because they are based on the teachings of the second chapter of the Acts of the Apostles. In fact, most of the Protestant Reformation was based around reforming the practices of churches to better match the Bible, which would mean, again, referencing Acts chapter 2. Now, what are these teachings...

First, verse one tells us that they were meeting together, which is of course significant.  In the following verses the Holy Ghost descends on the twelve and they are able to speak in tongues. Many churches today follow a practice where they speak in tongues in their meetings, whether it be one person at a podium, or the entire congregation together speaking in tongues. It is obvious that the twelve spoke in tongues by the power of the Holy Ghost, which had just descended upon them. However, one difference between the speaking in tongues mentioned here in Acts and that seen in some places today is that it says that the people understood what was being said.  More specifically, "every man heard them speak in his own language."

After the death and ascension of Jesus, and even more especially after receiving the Holy Ghost on this day of Pentecost, the disciples saw the scriptures through a new, Christian lens. In this chapter, the twelve use their new insight to teach the people—or rather, prove to the people—how the scriptures all point to Jesus as the Messiah.  Tens of thousands, or maybe hundreds of thousands of Jews from all over the world were gathered at Jerusalem for the Pentecost.  The twelve were on the temple mount, preaching to this innumerable gathering of the Jews.  After hearing their teachings, and seeing how their scriptures prophesied of Jesus, how He was not only the prophesied Messiah but Jehovah Himself, the Great I Am. They taught the people that they must call upon the name of Jesus Christ in order to be saved. Many of the people were convinced by their words, and they were baptized in the name of Jesus. Over three thousand people became Christians on that day.

This is significant because this is a turning point in the church. Up until now, the rulers of the Jews assumed that they'd squashed Jesus' little following after He was crucified. However, on this day the disciples of Jesus showed great boldness in coming to the temple and preaching these things, and they had great success. Now, not only was the following not squashed, but it had exploded into massive proportions has never before!