Seven of Everything

I heard a family scientist say - "Where religious faith is concerned, children do not imitate what they see their parents do, like they imitate language or social behavior; they become what they believe their parents are . " When parents are not living gospel principles in one way or another their children suffer. Some people, as we attempt to teach them the gospel, do not want family relationships to last forever and this because of their own experience in a family deprived of many loving experiences. Many gospel truths were not lived in their families and so they suffer because of it, often for their whole lives. People often have a hard time seeing God able to be a more capable father than their own father. For example some people find it hard to believe in a God who actually loves them and actually cares for their well being because they grew up with a father who lacked these qualities. "Faithlessness takes on a focused hostility when there is mistreatment, indiffere...

Several years ago in college I read a newspaper article highlighting a protest. The protesters tried disrupting an activity sponsored by the military. They were protesting the war in Iraq. Listed among their posters was “Who Would Jesus Bomb?” The idea behind this question implies that Jesus would not bomb anyone; He is full of mercy, advocates peace, and loves all of God’s children. It is true that Jesus loves all of us and that He is full of mercy, but this question, in the context of a protest for peace, attempts to teach something that is not true. So, who would Jesus bomb? I’ll tell you who Jesus would bomb: He would bomb cities that reject and kill His holy prophets 1 . He would bomb Sodom and Gomorrah which were well known for their wicked practices 2 ; and there are many other examples in the scriptures of who He would bomb. Out of those examples, the most well known example is when He bombed a country because the leader was oppressing the children of God 3 . Now, Jesus obvio...

I like studying physical health. Based on my understanding of the seven structure, I have come up with seven core elements of health: 1. Air 2. Water 3. Light 4. Food 5. Love 6. Exercise 7. Rest The order is important, and the more I study each area the more it appears that the degree of importance of each core element over the next is also important. This is contrary to my original thoughts. But there does need to be a balance of these seven areas; you can not focus only on water, food and exercise nor neglect air, light, love and rest. I believe that all other elements that relate to health are subcategories of the core elements and will fit under at lease one of the seven. I may elaborate on these in the future. I may also provide links to articles or sites that discuss the topic. Under air there are areas of clean air verses dirty air - pollution and smoking . Also breathing properly . If there is any validity behind aromatherapy or it's premises it would fit in this category...

Some people define accent as the wrong way to say something. Others define it as the way people speak in areas farther away from where they live. The fact is that if you can communicate you have an accent. In other words, you say your words with a certain emphasis on certain syllables based on how you were taught growing up or learned through hearing. I am not lacking offense in this area, but it tends to attract contention when we were taught that there is a right way to say a word or phrase and other people say that word or phrase differently. Recently at work there were two such instances where there was a controversy over how to say certain words (that is why this is on my mind;) and we all left the conversation thinking that we were right and the other was wrong. There are still those pet peeves that we probably all have, where we are bothered when people say a certain word a certain way. I still have them, but I often can't always remember what they are; and that is for the b...

My latest discovery of seven is Jacob 5: the Allegory of the Olive Tree. I will first outline the seven groups then I will try to explain to the best of my ability why each section belongs to its respective number. Unlike with a good chiasmus, I have not noticed a common evenness, or symmetry, between groupings of numbers. For example some numbers may have more emphasis than others; and that appears to be the case here where four has the largest volume of text. Main Structure: 1) vs 3-6 Desire to change 2) vs 7-14 Scattering/Separation 3) vs 15-28 Fruits of obedience 4) vs 29-51 Fruits of disobedience/Worthy of destruction 5) vs 52-60 God’s Mercy 6) vs 61-70 Gathering/Build up the church 7) vs 71-77 Perfection/Unity Since this is an allegory there are going to be many interpretations and meanings. None of them are necessarily wrong. I would say that this structure applies to any of the interpretations. To me this structure matches quite exactly with the process of repentance with a lit...

On my flights to and from Chantal's graduation I started to read a book that talked about digestion. And this is what I thought about this morning: The last step of digestion, in the large intestines, makes me think of the millennium. This step is where the body tries its best to extract the last possible healthy nutrients from the waste before utterly rejecting it. During the millennium all the wicked suffer the wrath of God, all being in hell and candidates for outer darkness. Those who finally accept baptism and receive the Holy Ghost are saved and not sent to outer darkness. The church and the gospel does it's very best to save every soul that wants to be saved in the Kingdom of God. All those who do not go to hell go to heaven. This is doctrine in the Bible and the Book of Mormon. Many members of the church think that we have a conflicting understanding from mainstream Christianity because D&C 76 can be interpreted in different ways; but in the introduction when it say...

I am now a blogger. I thought for my first entry I would explain the title of my blog. If you know me much you know that my favorite number is seven. There are many reasons for this, and they are all scriptural. The sevens that are not scriptural, I created based on the scriptures and are my ponderings or inspirations. The idea of a seven structure existing in the scriptures was introduced to me during a BYU Education Week in 2004 and I continued to learn about it each year for four years. Here are some of the scriptural examples: The creation (this is the most obvious one, all accounts), the seven feasts and festivals, the seven cities of refuge, the seven sons of Jesse, the seven parables of Matthew 13, the seven houses (of the Lord), the seven churches of revelation, and the seven beatitudes (ask me about the eighth). Some that are not obvious are the structure of the allegory of the Good Samaritan, the progression in Isaiah 55, the rest of the sermon on the mount (or at the temple)...