Something Else

 This is just a light post, nothing heavy. When Julia had her house wired for internet, this picture is how the ethernet wiring looked. It languished this way for a few years.

My Christmas present for her this year was to organize that into a real "Structured Media Center." Below is what about 30 hours of work plus about $300 in parts resulted in. What you see here are two 12-port Coax junction boxes, a 16 port switch, a 12-port patch panel, a telephone punch block (behind the switch), the cable modem, a lawn watering control system, five AC/DC adapters, a power strip and a lot of cables. There's also an outlet in the bottom of the box. Am I a geek? Yeah.

Into the Wilderness

After more than a year of preparation, and after receiving the Liahona, Lehi's party headed out into the Arabian wilderness. Talk about a flight of faith into the unknown!

Lehi's flight into the desert is an allegory for our day. The import and example can be a source of great comfort for us as we look forward to an uncertain future. Consider how events played out: The Lord gave Lehi time to prepare and step by step, got him ready for the trip. Then when the time was right, He led them into the wilderness of Arabia.

Lehi spent a significant amount of time in the Valley of Lemuel before heading into the wilderness. There were a lot of preparations the Lord knew they needed to make.

1.    They needed a written, non-perishable record of scripture, the Brass Plates of Laban. This helped them and future generations to remember the covenants Israel had made with God. It became the touchstone of the Nephite cultural identity. It had to be metallic plates so they'd withstand the ravages of time.

2.    You need people to make a colony. Lehi's sons needed good Jewish girls for wives to preserve their culture in a distant land. There would be none where they were going, so Ishmael's family was as important to preserving the expedition's culture as the plates were.

3.    They would need food for the trip and for their final destination, hence the gathering of seeds. It's interesting that they gathered "fruit" seeds as well as grain seeds. 

4.    As city dwellers, they had to adjust and get familiar or comfortable with living in tents. Maybe Lehi was already familiar with doing so. Ishmael? We don't know, but there was probably some time needed to get used to the rhythm and patterns of living in a tent in the desert wilderness after living in a city.

Finally, after all the marriages were completed, the supplies and seeds gathered and their written history was assured, the Lord gave them the next key component of the trip: a "map" in the form of the Liahona.

And off they went.

They had prepared for the trip, but it was still a leap into the unknown. A leap which took great faith. All they "knew" is the Liahona would guide them to their eventual new home. Talk about an epic journey! They crossed a deadly desert and a great ocean before arriving at their new home.

When I think about today and what that means for me, I think of the scriptures which say, "if ye are prepared, ye shall not fear." I also think of Pres. Nelson's invitation to learn to live by revelation: to learn to live by our own personal Liahona's as it were.

It's as important today as it was for Lehi. For while the physical dangers aren't as significant today as then, the uncertainty of the future is just as unsettling. With our personal Liahonas (revelation) and a determined faith, we can navigate our time just as surely as Lehi did those wilderness deserts. After years of effort, they ended up in their Promised Land. We can too.

One Step at a Time

I was thinking this morning about what Heavenly Father did to lead Lehi to the promised land. He didn't tell him in that first dream where he saw the light that he was going to leave Jerusalem and travel around the world, in a boat no less, as one of Israel's scattered branches. He didn't tell him his descendants would devolve to multi-generational wars and that eventually one branch of his descendants would be wiped out in internecine wars. Nor did He tell him that His Son would personally appear to his distant descendants.

Instead he led him along, one step at a time:

Lehi, preach to the people of Jerusalem.

Lehi, you are to flee with your family into the wilderness. (Once they are in the wilderness, the Lord tells Nephi he will be led to a land of promise.)

Lehi, send your sons back for the plates of brass owned by Laban.

Lehi, send your sons back to convince Ishmael and his family to join you.

Lehi, here's a "Liahona" to help guide you through the wilderness you have to cross.

Lehi, I'm going to help your son Nephi build a boat, then you're all getting on it and setting off into the great ocean.

Every step along the way, aside from where He tells Nephi He is going to guide them to the promised land, He just tells Lehi what to do next. Every step was a test faith. Every step required not looking back but focusing on the future. Each involved considerable risk. Every step came by revelation and only after acting on what had already been given.

Since God is an unchangeable God, why should I be surprised that aside from the promise of getting to the Celestial Kingdom God doesn't say much about the intervening steps?

Nephi and Laban, a David and Goliath Story

Nephi’s actions to get the Brass Plates is meaningful for our day. In particular, I’m mindful of what he told Laman and Lemuel after they’d lost their family fortune to Laban.

Laman said: 

“How is it possible that the Lord will deliver Laban into our hands? Behold, he is a mighty man and he can command fifty. Yea, even he can slay fifty, then why not us?”

Nephi’s answer: 

“Let us go up again unto Jerusalem, and let us be faithful in keeping the commandments of the Lord. For behold, he is mightier than all the earth. Then why not mightier than Laban and his fifty? Yea, or even than his tens of thousands? Therefore let us go up.”

Then Nephi does and he recounts, “I was led by the Spirit, not knowing beforehand the things which I should do.”

He took action. In doing so, I think the Lord led him to where Laban had passed out in a drunken stupor. (Because he was celebrating his newly acquired wealth?) Whereupon Nephi is obedient to the Spirit and kills Laban so he can get the plates. This is a great link that goes deeper into explaining the “legality” of Nephi murdering Laban:

https://knowhy.bookofmormoncentral.org/knowhy/was-nephis-slaying-of-laban-legal

It’s interesting, in light of what is happening today, that what Nephi was told to get was a history of his people. The Lord intended it to preserve the Nephite's history, language, and culture. The Lamanites and Mulekites didn’t have it and they forgot who they were. With the crackdown and censoring going on by Twitter, FaceBook and YouTube, this is also what’s also at stake for us to remember who we are in the face of deliberate "cancelling" of the truth from our society.

It’s also instructive, that despite Laban’s overwhelming political power compared to what Nephi and his brothers had at that time. When it really mattered, it didn't matter at all: the Lord’s will was still accomplished.

Trump's Legacy

This is a Facebook response to a comment made by a couple of friends. I want the entry here, in anticipation that Facebook will take this down because it's "favorable" of Trump. I've removed the names of the people I responded to for their privacy.

My friends, I’m going to respectfully disagree with some of what you’ve posted here. But first, let me share what we do agree upon.

1. The unlawful breaching of Capitol security, the vandalism of buildings and offices within the Capitol complex was wrong. I condemn the actions and behavior in the strongest way. This is not what law abiding American citizens do. It is a stain on our national fabric that will be very hard to remove. Yesterday will be a permanent part of Trump’s legacy. What Biden does to heal the nation will be his. Time will tell whether that’s a good or bad one.

2. Those who perpetrated the actions yesterday should be found and punished to the full extent of the law.

3. I earnestly hope and pray this is the last of time any peaceful protest turns violent in our country or anywhere. Perhaps, since there is a Democratic president, the media will be less inclined to stoke racial hatred should there be another “Trevon Martin event” in the coming four years. We’ll see.

4. In a way, I’m relieved Trump is leaving office. I wish he’d’ve been more “Presidential” in defeat, but he wasn’t. If he’s going to continue on the track he’s taken since November, it’s best that he leave office.

Now, where we disagree:

1. While Trump has been wrong to push the meme of a fraudulent balloting processes and election chicanery of stealing the election from him, election fraud and voter tampering has been committed. The DNC cleverly “altered” the laws through litigation and fiat in several battleground states to change the laws so what once was fraud was now legal. But the changes they made are still unconstitutional.

2. Apparently, you and I live in alternate realities regarding the events of recent years. Democrats have not considered the last three elections where a Republican won as a legitimate electoral victory. Do you remember the chad chasing that went on in Florida in the 2000 election? I do. They fought that election to the Supreme Court. They fought the 2016 election in court too. They threw a “fit” when they lost. The only difference is a friendly media obscured their churlish behavior and said it was the “right of Americans” to debate and challenge the results. What they thought was ok to do then, they condemn Trump for doing now.

This is how I remember the last four years:

It was Democrats of 2016 who called for Trump’s impeachment before he took office.

It was the Democrats of 2016 who refused to attend Trump’s inauguration.

It was the Democrats of 2016 who refused to accept his election at all. They and the media have said, since he won in Nov. 2016, that he “stole the election” through Russian tampering.

It was Hillary Clinton’s Election committee who financed the Steele Report: a dossier compiled by a discredited British Intelligence agent for the purpose of impugning the character of a presidential candidate. The report was thoroughly discredited and refuted. The FBI admitted it was all lies.

In fact it was the DNC which colluded with Russia in 2016. That British agent got much of his information from Russian operatives. Actually, I think Putin played both sides against each other for sport.

Using this debunked data, the Obama administration’s FBI, CIA and Cabinet secretaries unmasked members of Trump’s campaign staff with the intent of weakening his election bid.

It was Obama’s FBI which broke the law by failing to tell President-elect Trump that one of the people he planned to bring on as a consultant was under criminal investigation. They kept it silent and then accused him after Trump took office to damage Trump.

It was the political appointees in the Obama FBI and Department of Justice who overrode the recommendation of the field agents who interviewed General Flynn. The agents found no cause for further investigation: they said Flynn had done nothing wrong. But James Comey and Andy McCabe overrode that and pursued a criminal attack against him just to injure then President-elect Trump. They destroyed Flynn to get Trump.

The discredited Steele dossier was the centerpiece of Mueller’s investigation of Trump.

It is a fact the Main Stream Media (MSM) has waged an unrelenting attack on Pres. Trump for as long as he’s been a presidential candidate. I’ll grant he has been his own worst enemy and his tweets have been astounding at times, but that still doesn’t change the fact their attacks on him have been incessant, malicious, and politically motivated. The past four years have revealed the MSM to be little more than propaganda organs of the DNC. There is no other honest way to define them.

It was Twitter, YouTube, and Facebook which actively censored and “fact checked” away any information critical of Biden prior to the election. Did you know that Facebook’s head of fact checking is now on Biden’s presidential staff? Talk about a conflict of interest! What Russian hackers were accused of doing in 2016, those three tech companies actively did in 2020.

If you’re going to condemn Trump for his “womanizing” you’d better be condemning Joe Biden too. Jill Biden’s ex-husband, Bill Stevenson, claims Joe and Jill had an affair while she was still married to Bill. The affair ended their marriage. Joe denies it, Bill doesn’t. No surprise there. Then there’s Tara Reed who accuses Biden of pressing her against a wall and “reached under her clothing and penetrated her with his fingers.” Seven other women have made similar accusations against him. You haven’t heard of it because Biden is a Democrat and the MSM is running interference for him. Let’s not forget the serial dalliances of Bill Clinton and John F. Kennedy. Nor should we overlook the efforts of Hillary Clinton to use her husband’s power to destroy Bill’s accusers/victims.

If you’re going to condemn him for “race baiting” then you must also condemn President Obama for doing worse with regards to Trevon Martin and Ferguson, MO just to name two incidents where presidential comments inflamed racial tensions. You’ve been lied to by the hostile press about Trump’s Charlotte attack comments. I heard Trump’s complete statements; they were reported out of context to distort his tepid condemnation of racial hatred into a sanction of the crimes that were committed. 

If you’re going to condemn Trump for building the wall, you must do so knowing it was supported by the Democrats until Trump supported it.

If you’re going to condemn Trump for splitting families at the border, you must also condemn Obama for initiating the practice.

If you’re going to condemn Trump for lying, you must condemn Obama and Hillary for lying about what happened in Benghazi, Libya when the ambassador and three special force members where murdered there by terrorists. It was not some YouTube video which incited the attack. It was about a secret arms trade with Syrian rebels that went bad. And contrary to the news, the Navy was able to respond with an air attack. It was not approved by President Obama.

The racial tensions in this country should be blamed not on Trump but on the MSM. If you think it has been an honest arbiter of the truth, then it is you who is not connected to reality. Just one of my evidences of their journalistic malpractice is the case of Nick Sandman. Both CNN and the Washington Post, plus possible others have settled out of court for their deliberate vilification of an innocent high school student. They attacked him because he chose to wear a MAGA hat while touring the Lincoln Memorial. They saw it as an opportunity to paint Trump supporters in a bad light and it has cost them millions of dollars. (I’m guessing about the amount, I don’t really know.) If that’s not enough, consider the movie Richard Jewell. Another innocent man was destroyed by the media in the name of ratings even when they knew they were lying about him.

Nothing has been said of the peace accords Trump brokered between Israel, the United Arab Emirates, Sudan, Morocco, and Bahrain. They are historic. These alone should’ve earned Trump a Nobel Peace Prize, but they wont.

Nothing positive has been said about the repatriation of American businesses. Many jobs have come back from overseas. They did because of Trump’s renegotiating NAFTA and the PacRim trade agreements.

Nothing positive has been said of the US withdrawal from the Paris Climate Agreement. On close examination, the accord had the US foot the carbon footprint bill for China and India. Both countries are major polluters and have the economic capability to take care of themselves without US assistance.

Nothing has been said about the unprecedented growth in US wages and the record low unemployment rates due to his administration’s regulatory changes and the tax reformation act he signed into law. Of particular note is the record low unemployment rate of minorities and women. Covid was an unexpected event, had it not occurred, one can only guess how much better the economy would be now.

Unlike the five preceding presidential administrations (Reagan, Bush 41, Clinton, Bush 43, and Obama) no new “wars” were started by Trump. The ISIS caliphate was virtually destroyed and several high-profile terrorists are now dead. But you don’t hear about that other than unfounded accusations that he’s causing political instability in the world.

Nothing positive has been said about Trump’s insistence that the other NATO partners pay their agreed upon share of the cost of funding NATO. They are paying more now, but all you hear is how he’s disliked overseas.

The pro-life movement has not had a better champion than Trump’s administration in decades.

This list just scratches the surface of the good things he has done, but you don’t hear about them because it goes against the MSM’s goal of attacking Trump in everything they do and say about him.

Please don’t accuse Trump supporters like myself of living in a world of alternate facts. As a college trained journalist, I know what to look for and can tell good journalism from bad journalism. I can tell when the reporter is injecting his opinion into what should be a factual news story. I can tell when they are presenting an opinion piece as news. I can tell a friendly, softball interview from an adversarial, go-for the throat interview. I can tell when a reporter isn’t listening to an answer but fishing for a soundbyte. Good journalists are hard to find today: most are wannabe opinion writers on a mission to impress their editors. There are just a few reliable news agencies; hardly any in the US. Facebook and Twitter are NOT reliable news sources. Anyone who listens or reads just them is at best ill-informed.

That said, I’m relieved he’s leaving office. His behavior after the election has convinced me he needs to go. But that doesn’t mean I’m “happy” about who’s replacing him. If you paid attention to the democratic primary debates, you will know neither Joe Biden nor Kamala Harris are angels. You’ll never hear about it now because a complicit media will never treat them as they treated Trump. For myself, I voted for the policies Trump supported rather than for him. 

I fear for our nation. The Democratic Party is about to have sole power of the government as they did when Obama became president in 2008. A list of harmful changes are now on the table as it were. Those that are enacted will help institutionalize a permanent Democratic electoral majority. Others, if enacted, will fundamentally weaken the republican nature of our government which will weaken our constitutional rights and liberties. 

These changes are:

1. Adding new states to the union to increase the Democrats’ structural majority in the electoral college.

2. Adding additional justices to the Supreme Court to tilt its bias back to judicial activism.

3. Weakening or bypassing the Electoral College which will destroy one of the major protections of small states (population-wise) from the large states’ avarice and greed.

4. The “Green New Deal” which will destroy our nation’s energy independence.

5. Forgiveness of student debt which will transfer that debt to the taxpayers.

6. Single-payer (government provided) health care could become a reality. (While I agree there are some severe problems with our health-care system, this is not the solution you are looking for.)

7. Further liberalizing abortion access and resumption of abortion funding paid to Planned Parenthood.

8. Destruction of the nuclear family and traditional marriages through redefining these relationships with gender neutral terms.

They also have the social media corporations and news organizations as brazen proponents of a progressive political agenda. Maybe Biden will be “strong” enough to resist them, but that seems unlikely. The only thing that gives me hope for the future at this time are the prophetic statements of President Nelson that the Lord’s work will not be stopped and that those who stay on the covenant path will be “prospered in the land.”

In closing, know that I love the two of you and your families dearly. I hold you as close and good friends. I acknowledge this has been a trying time for our nation. 2020 has been the perfect storm of a terrible disease, a very partisan, even tribal election season, and racial unrest. My hope is that 2021 will be better. I wish you all well.

Lehi's Flight into the Desert

It's been said, "context is everything." What this means is when the context of an event is understood, you better comprehend what has happened. Which in turn gives you additional insights that can completely alter your perception of the event.

As an example, if a headline says "16 year old shoots and kills an older man" Your first read of that will likely lead you to think the 16-year old has committed a felony. But when the context comes to light that the "older" man is 22, and had already fatally stabbed the 16-year old's friend with a knife and was now attacking her with the same knife, you see it as a justifiable act of self-defense. The headline was true as far as it went, but the context changes your understanding of what happened: it's no longer a felony but a justified act of self-defense. 

Along similar lines, a lot of archeological research and field work that has been done in recent decades give a lot more context to us about Lehi's flight into the desert. This gives corresponding new appreciation for the faith of this great prophet.

This is what the Book of Mormon, teaches us about Lehi:

1. He lived in Jerusalem.

2. He is a member of the tribe of Manasseh.

3. He had access to his lands of inheritance.

4. His son, Nephi, was a highly skilled metalsmith and scribe.

5. He faithfully warned the people of Jerusalem as God had commanded him to do. For that, his life was threatened to the point the Lord commanded him to flee from Jerusalem.

This blog entry will touch the highlights of the additional context which is now available to us.  They include:

1. Lehi’s (great?) grandparents were refugees who fled to Jerusalem when the capital city of the Northern Kingdom, Samaria, was conquered in ~723 BC.

2. Their lands of inheritance were to the west of the Jordan River and they had a written title to their land. That title to the land had been handed down from generation to generation before it came into his possession. It would have been of no value until the reign of King Josiah when the Assyrians withdrew from the land. Once they were gone, it restored his claim to the land. The Samaritans who actually lived on the land would’ve owed him rent to farm it and to stay there.

3. In Lehi’s time, trades were passed from father to son.

4. As the descendant of refugees, with no tribal lands to farm, Lehi, like his fathers before him, learned a trade to earn a living. That trade was likely metal-smithing, which we have now learned was a highly regarded skill.

5. Lehi may have been the one who taught Nephi to write. But Nephi’s use of a classic Egyptian colophon to introduce his writing implies formal scribal training. Lehi was wealthy enough to afford sending his sons to school.

6. Lehi lived in a house with his family in Jerusalem in an upscale area known as the Mishneh. He probably did not live on the land of his inheritance, but rather rented it to Samaritan farmers. 

7. Given his craft as a metalsmith, he probably traveled to Timna for ores which he needed for his business. (Timna is mining town south of Jerusalem on the road to modern day Aqaba, Lehi’s jumping off point into the wilderness.) Because of his trips there, he was acquainted with the route and experienced at living in tents.

8. Lehi was a contemporary of Jeremiah and Urijah the prophets. He was probably aware of Urijah’s fate of being extradited from Egypt back to Jerusalem and his eventual execution.

9. At the time he fled from Jerusalem, no route but south was safe: to the north was Assyria, to the East was Ammon and Moab who were hostile to Judah at the time, to the West was the ocean. As explained above, Egypt was no refuge. That left the Frankincense trail into Arabia as the only safe route out of town. It was a daunting and dangerous trail even for experienced caravaners, let alone women and children accustomed to life in a city.

10. He probably had time to plan his departure from Jerusalem. He had time to take his riches and hide them in his land of inheritance. He had time to buy supplies and arrange for camels with which to ride into the Arabian wilderness.

There are more things which could be brought up, but this is enough for now. I’ll elaborate on some of these in future entries. I need to give credit to people like Jeff Chadwick, Margaret Barker, John Tvedtnes, John Welch, Arnie Greene, Daniel Peterson and many others who are the real scholars behind what I've written here. What I have written is my opinion, but it draws on their research. I’ll cite their works when I go into greater detail on these points.