Dr Paul Allen

Luke Simmons Wait a second. . . . Those giant, beautiful warriors are elves? I was so confused watching The Lord of the Rings for the first time. I hadn’t read the books (gasp!) and was finding out the magical creatures of Rivendell were unlike any elves I’d ever heard of. In my understanding, elves were tiny—they lived in trees baking cookies or at the North Pole assembling toys. They scurried around more like ants than archers. But J. R. R. Tolkien’s elves (brought to life by Peter Jackson) were elegant, striking, powerful, and—I later discovered—immortal. It was the same word (“elf”) but a different dictionary. And a different dictionary because it was a different story. The only other time I felt as confused by words with such divergent meanings was when I started living around Mormons. This confusion demands a better approach to reaching them with gospel grace. Surrounded by LDS Neighbors I live in Queen Creek, Arizona, a Phoenix-area suburb, surrounded by neighbours who belong to...

An LDS (or “Mormon”) commenter showed up and we had a little back-and-forth.  I claimed that no other world religion has writings that claim “to actually be written by God by means of people who were writing on behalf of, and empowered and guided by, the Spirit of God himself.”  The commenter suggested that the book of Mormon did  indeed  claim to be inspired, as according to the above definition.  I asked for citation, and he gave a series of references that I challenged as insufficient.  He also gave a smooth-sounding argument for additional scripture, which I’ll summarize: 1. The people recorded  in  the Bible added  to  the Bible without violating the commands  of  the Bible. 2.  Men chose which books to include in the Canon of Scripture, but they learned  which  books were inspired because they prayed about it. 3.  You  too  can pray about it and discover whether  other  book...